Who are you going to hire if you want thoughtful people? The answer as many are finding out today is that you are going to find that most of the good people are women. Where are the men? That is another question. The fact is that - if you want talent, you will find that your main pool will be women.
So what?
First of all the total pool is going to be smaller and those in it are going to have the power to get what they want.
This is PEI data (Wendy MacDonald) but it is typical of any centre that has not a huge pool of new immigrants to draw on. The birth rate is way down. Not only is the pool smaller but in places like PEI, about 40% of the kids who leave high school are not socially/educationally equipped to cope in the work world at all.
So the talented women will be a rare bunch indeed.
What else is going on?
A massive chunk of the workforce will be retiring then too - so demand will be higher than ever.
All the power will be in the hands of the talent.
So here is my point - are you as an employer ready? Will your workplace be attractive to this small pool? Do you even know what "attractive" might be? What if you are not?
It's college graduation season, and according to data available from the U.S. Department of Education, an estimated 3,092,800 degrees will be granted this academic year (2008-2009) for Associate's degrees (714,000), Bachelor's degrees (1,585,000), Master's degrees (647,000), Professional degrees for MD, DDS and JD (91,000) and Doctor's degrees for Ph.D and Ed.D (55,800).
Of the more than 3 million college degrees for the Class of 2009, women will earn close to 60% of those degrees (1,849,200), or almost 149 degrees for every 100 degrees earned by men.
And it's now official: Women dominate men at every level of higher education, in terms of degrees conferred. Here's the breakdown for graduates of the class of 2009:
Associate's Degrees: 167 for women for every 100 for men.
Bachelor's Degrees: 142 for women for every 100 for men.
Master's Degrees: 159 for women for every 100 for men.
Professional Degrees: 104 for women for every 100 for men.
Doctoral Degrees: 107 for women for every 100 for men.
In fact, the last time men had more degrees than women at any level was the Class of 2006, which had slightly more men than women for both Professional and Doctoral degrees. For the other levels, it hasn't been even close for decades. The last year that men earned more Master's degrees than women was 1984-1985, for Bachelor's degrees it was the Class of 1981, and for Associates degrees it was 1976-1977 when men earned more degrees than women.
