This post comes from EDUCAUSE. “The last two decades have been marked by a profound revolution in the creation, storage, and use of information. The dream of ubiquitous information environments may be at hand, but how well do they support scholarly and scientific research?Despite the opportunities offered by the digital medium, early approaches focused on replicating information, as opposed to using digital technology to transform information. In higher education, we concentrated on preserving information in the same modalities that had been used for centuries—static articles and maps, for example—and simply changed the storage and access medium.

Fortunately, lessons from today’s practices can provide insight into how to innovatively respond to the infrastructure challenges of enabling cyberscholarship. Comprising new forms of research and scholarship that are qualitatively different from the traditional ways of using publications and research data, cyberscholarship is based on the widespread availability of digital content.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Comscore. LONDON, U.K., January 30, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its Q4 2007 rankings of the largest careers services & development sites in Europe, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service.

Approximately 53.9 million Europeans visited a career services and development site during an average month during the fourth quarter of 2007, averaging 3.5 visits per visitor. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article comes from the Salem Statesman Journal.

If you’re a Salem-area business owner or a parent with a young person age 16 to 24 in your household, there’s something you need to know:

When young people make an early connection to the world of work, they are more likely to stay working and lead productive lives, according to all the studies.

Youths who have jobs in high school drop out less, particularly if they’re from lower-income families. If they have jobs in high school and don’t go to college, they make a smoother transition to the permanent work force. They also earn more after 10 years than those who don’t have jobs in high school.

It has become more difficult over the years for young adults to have access to full-time, well-paid jobs. The reasons have to do with changes in the basic functioning of the economy.

For one, early work-force participation rises with family income — not surprising because more-affluent families generally have more connections themselves to the work force. It’s more difficult for kids from lower-income families to make that first, all-important work connection.

There also has been a decline in good-paying entry-level manufacturing jobs, as well as competition from immigrants for jobs in many industries and from older adults, particularly for jobs in the retail industry.

As a result of these trends, the number of young people age 16 to 24 with jobs has reached a historical low, continuing to decline even after the economy’s recovery from the last recession. Employment rates for people younger than 20 have declined even more steeply.

That’s a huge waste of human resources in an ever-tightening job market. Low youth-employment rates also are associated with costly societal problems such as increases in teen pregnancy, drug use and criminal activity.

What all this means is that extra effort has to be made to boost youth employment and give businesses incentives to hire them. That’s where local work-force programs come in. The Enterprise for Employment and Education is the local work-force board that invests the federal government’s training money, and one of its priorities is youth employment.

A few years back, Gary Becker won the Nobel Prize in economics for recognizing that investing in “human capital” was as important for the success of the nation’s economy — if not more so — than investing in machinery. There’s no more important investment than in the young — they are the future.

If you’re a Salem-area business and you get a phone call asking you to take a chance on hiring a young person who needs job experience, think about saying yes. If you’re a parent, encourage your kids to experience the world of work early on. It will pay off, for youths who will have a solid connection to the work force and higher earnings throughout their life, and for the economy and society, as well.

Pamela Ferrara is a work-force analyst for Worksource Oregon Employment Department.

This post comes from the Maryland Daily Record.

If you’ve ever fantasized about quitting your job and starting a business, you’re certainly not alone. But it’s definitely not something to do on a whim.

A business startup requires parallel planning in advance for your business and personal finances. That’s because business owners — even those who are acquiring ongoing businesses or starting their own companies on the cheap — quickly find their business and personal finances are inextricably linked. So, instead of saying you’re going to start a business in 2008, commit to making a solid financial plan for that business in 2008 for a launch later on.

Here are some basic steps to consider right now:

Start with advice: You need not one, but two sets of financial advice when starting a business. The first involves the viability of your business concept. You should understand your business idea inside and out before you launch and what your new company’s immediate and long-term cash needs will be.

The second set of advice involves your own finances and how prepared you are for what will surely be a major lifestyle transition. Because new business owners frequently underestimate their new business’s expenses starting out, they can find themselves funding those business needs out-of-pocket. That means less money for day-to-day living expenses as well as long-term planning for retirement. That’s why it’s critical to consult a tax and financial expert professional at the outset.

Focus on your debts first: With the possible exception of mortgage debt, there’s very little “good debt” in the life of a businessperson. So while you’re researching your business concept and putting together your own financial plan, start cutting back and erasing as much credit card and adjustable-rate debt from your life as possible. While you might find that plenty of people might want to lend you money as a new business owner, remember that you’ll have the most flexibility in your business — and your life — when you owe as little as possible.

Start thinking about your legal business structure: Your personal financial situation and the kind of business you’re starting should determine the legal designation of your company.

Before choosing a business structure, such as a sole proprietorship, S or C corporation, partnership, Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), or Limited Liability Company (LLC), owners should reflect on their business in the context of their overall financial life and ask themselves a series of questions:

*Is the business going to be your primary source of personal wealth and daily cash flow, or is it a side business?

*Do you expect the business to pay for your retirement?

*Do you want it to provide other financial benefits?

*Do you want to pass it on to family members or sell it to existing employees or outside buyers?

The answers to these questions figure importantly into the decision, along with other key factors such as what type of business it is, its risk factors, current tax laws, and regulations such as workman’s compensation.

Get your emergency fund in shape: While it’s wise for everyone to have 3-6 months of cash set aside for basic living expenses in case they lose their job or face a medical emergency, emergency funds are particularly necessary for new business owners. Startups can be particularly expensive, and most businesses are not profitable from day one. Better yet, plan an emergency fund not only for yourself, but for the business as well.

Plan your healthcare and other basic benefits: Automatic benefits are the plus side of working for someone else. When you’re working for yourself, you become your own HR department and chances are you won’t be able to match your old employer’s buying power. If you support a family with these benefits or if you have particular health concerns, you need to price the out-of-pocket costs of such benefits before starting your own company – depending on the business and the cost of those benefits, you might want to rethink your plans.

Price disability coverage now: You might have short-term disability coverage as part of your current employee benefits, but that will likely end once you quit your job. You should price long-term disability coverage based on your present working salary so you can qualify for the highest possible benefit. Disability coverage is critical for self-employed people since they’re their own support system.

(This column is produced by the Financial Planning Association, the membership organization for the financial planning community, and is provided by Gary S. Williams, CFP, CRPC with Williams Asset Management. Gary is also an Investment Adviser Representative of and offers securities and advisory services through Commonwealth Financial Network, Member FINRA/SIPC, a registered investment adviser. He is located at 8850 Columbia 100 Parkway, Suite 204, Columbia, MD and can be reached via phone at 410-740-0220 or via email at gary@williamsassetmanagement.com.)

This post comes from Hotjobs.

A steady stream of discouraging economic news is bringing with it talk of the dreaded “R” word. Economists at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley say the U.S. is heading for its first-blown recession in 16 years, and a recent CNN poll found that 57 percent of the public believe the U.S. is in a recession already, with the economy topping the list of voter’s worries.

A recession could hit some job-seekers hard. “A lot of people won’t have the luxury of going for their first choice in a down economy,” said Sophia Koropeckyj, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

However, many employment sectors are expected to remain strong despite a possible recession, and job-seekers may have more success if they focus on recession-proof professions.

The Bright Spots

John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, told Yahoo! HotJobs that careers in the following fields may offer a good chance of weathering a storm this year.

 * Education. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has historically shown teaching to be relatively recession-proof. But demographics are important: High-growth areas like the Sun Belt offer much better prospects than the Rust Belt.

 * Energy. “This is a major issue for the global economy, and jobs related to oil and gas, alternative energy and even nuclear are likely to see strong growth,” Challenger said.

* Health care. Almost half the 30 fastest growing occupations are concentrated in health services — including medical assistants, physical therapists, physician assistants, home health aides, and medical records and health information technicians — according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 * International business. “If you have a strong knowledge of other cultures, and an ability to work in another country, you’ll find plenty of opportunities,” according to John Challenger. “If you’re first generation Chinese, with business skills and Chinese language skills, you’re in good shape.

* Environmental sector. There is a huge and growing industry geared to combat global warming. “Not only will professionals with skills in sustainability issues be in demand through the end of the decade, we are likely to shortages of professionals with ‘green’ skills,” said Rona Fried, president of sustainablebusiness.com, a networking service for sustainable businesses.

 * Security. “Crime doesn’t stop during a recession, and police officers, port security specialists and international security experts will continue to be in demand,” Challenger emphasized.

Other Sectors Feel the Slump

Koropeckyj and other economists agree that many troubled industries will feel the pain from the deflating housing bubble.

“The housing slump will touch anything related to housing, from real estate to investment banks, to engineering and architecture,” Koropeckyj said. Though public sector jobs grew at a fast clip in the last five years, state and local government jobs are likely to slow as home values, and, consequently, tax revenues, sink.

The housing slump could even extend to industries dependent on discretionary spending, like restaurants and retail, she indicated. Manufacturing, too, long in dire need of an upswing, is likely to keep waiting for one through 2008, Koropeckyj said.

This post comes from The Economic Times. The United Nations labour agency predicts that economic turbulence resulting from credit market turmoil and rising oil prices could lead to another 5 million people becoming unemployed this year.

That is just one of the key findings the International Labour Office (ILO) released in its annual Global Employment Trends report, which analyses the impact of factors ranging from population and economic growth to financial crises on labour markets.

The report notes that the decrease in growth in developed economies owing to the credit market crisis and higher oil prices had so far been “compensated for in the rest of the world,” especially in Asia, which has witnessed strong economic and job growth.

However, an expected slowdown in growth during 2008 could increase the global unemployment rate to 6.1 per cent, resulting in an increase of at least 5 million unemployed worldwide, the report warns.

The forecast for this year differs from 2007, considered by ILO to be a ‘watershed year’ in that it saw a stabilization of global labour markets with more people in work, some 45 million new jobs and only a small increase in the number of those unemployed, to a total of nearly 190 million worldwide.

“This year’s global jobs picture is one of contrasts and uncertainty,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “While global growth is annually producing millions of new jobs, unemployment remains unacceptably high and may go to levels not seen before this year.”

He added that although more people are currently employed than ever before, more jobs does not necessarily mean decent jobs. “Too many people, if not unemployed, remain among the ranks of the working poor, the vulnerable or the discouraged.”

According to the ILO, an estimated 487 million workers or 16.4 per cent of the total still do not earn enough to surpass the $1 a day poverty line, and 1.3 billion workers (or 43.5 per cent) still live below $2 a day.

“What is apparent is that economic progress doesn’t automatically translate into new and decent jobs,” said Mr. Somavia, emphasizing that “labour market policies must be at the centre of macroeconomic policies to ensure that economic growth is inclusive and that development involves good, decent work.”

Decent work, as defined by the ILO, provides for opportunity and income; rights, voice and recognition; family stability; personal development; and fairness and gender equality.

Today’s post comes from the Wired Science Blog. Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest and previewed to the scientific community at the Science Foo camp at the Googleplex last August, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon.Building on the company’s acquisition of the data visualization technology, Trendalyzer, from the oft-lauded, TED presenting Gapminder team, Google will also be offering algorithms for the examination and probing of the information. The new site will have YouTube-style annotating and commenting features.

The storage would fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and would allow citizen scientists access to an unprecedented amount of data to explore. For example, two planned datasets are all 120 terabytes of Hubble Space Telescope data and the images from the Archimedes Palimpsest, the 10th century manuscript that inspired the Google dataset storage project.

This news item comes from The Washington Post. Long-Term Joblessness Spreads in Middle Class!

An unusually large share of workers have been out a job for more than six months even as overall unemployment has remained low, a little-noted weakness in the labor market that analysts said threatens to intensify the impact of the unfolding economic downturn.

In November, nearly 1.4 million people — almost one in five of those unemployed — had been jobless for at least 27 weeks, the juncture when unemployment insurance benefits end for most recipients. That is about twice the level of long-term unemployment before the 2001 recession.

The problem is ensnaring a broader swath of workers than before. Once concentrated among manufacturing workers and those with little work history, education or skills, long-term unemployment is growing most rapidly among white-collar and college-educated workers with long work experience, studies have found, making the problem difficult for policymakers to address even as it grows more urgent.

“What has happened is a polarization of the labor market. It was very strong at the very top and very strong until recently at the bottom,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. “But in the recent weak recovery, and now recession, demand has been very weak” for jobs in the middle.

Caroline Dixon never contemplated any of that when she resigned in April after nine months as a program officer with the Spina Bifida Association. She left because the job was “a bad fit,” and she said she was confident that the economy was strong and she would soon find work. For a long time, she never stopped in the unemployment office on Naylor Road near her Southeast Washington home.

But as weeks out of work stretched into months, Dixon, 41, became a fixture there. Now she can be found there on weekdays, spending untold hours at the heavily used computer bank checking out potential employers, printing job notices and e-mailing her resume, “I jokingly tell people that I’m headed to my office when I’m coming here,” she said, without a smile.

With the economy sliding toward a possible recession and the jobless rate having spiked to 5 percent last month, the already high rate of long-term unemployment is likely to grow, as it has during past slowdowns, a prospect that has spawned calls in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail to extend unemployment benefits and expand tax cuts to protect jobs and fuel the economy.

The growth in long-term unemployment has occurred even as displaced workers have taken bigger pay cuts to reenter the job market. A 2004 study found that workers who lost a job in 2001 to 2003 took an average pay cut of 17 percent in their new jobs, more than double the average cut of those displaced in the late 1990s.

“When people are losing good jobs these days, they have a very hard time getting back to the type of job they had before,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that presses for more generous unemployment benefits.

While strong corporate profits, low inflation and record manufacturing output characterized the extended recovery that followed the 2001 recession, some economists call that period of expansion a “CEO’s recovery.” Real wages were mostly flat, poverty ticked upward and an unusual number of people had a hard time finding work — a fact masked by relatively low overall unemployment rates.

“This tells you that this has not been as good an economy as the overall unemployment rate would make it seem,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “This dynamic causes anxiety among people even if they still have a job. It is very important to understanding the level of anxiety that the work force feels as a whole.”

Dixon estimates that she has sent out more than 100 resumes, yielding four interviews. And nobody is talking about paying her anything near the $65,000 she made in her last job. “All of my friends keep telling me, ‘You’ll get a job,’ ” Dixon said. “But that’s what I thought six months ago, and I still don’t have one.”

Dixon said she and her friends and family grow more anxious the longer she is out of work. For nearly all of her life, having a job was a given: Her late father had worked 35 years for Washington Gas; her mother retired from her last job after more than 15 years. After graduating from college in 1989, Dixon worked for 16 years at the American Forest Foundation before moving to the Spina Bifida Association in the District.

These days, her mother, who lives in Capitol Heights, often sends Dixon encouraging notes with Safeway gift cards tucked inside. “I’m sure she’s concerned,” Dixon said. “She’s always asking, ‘So, how’s the job hunt going?’ I tell her, ‘If I had a job, you’d be one of the first people I’d tell.’ ”

Dixon has managed to stay afloat by occasionally working as a substitute teacher at the Washington Middle School for Girls, using a small profit she earns from a rental property and tapping into her savings. She said she considers herself lucky to get free health insurance through a D.C. program that provides coverage for the unemployed.

Still, things are getting tight for Dixon, who is single and has no children. “I need a safety net under my safety net,” she said.

Officials who work with the jobless said they are seeing more people like Dixon– educated, with stable work histories — having a hard time finding a job.

“It seems like for the skilled worker who has experience and credentials, finding a job that matches their skill and experience is like reaching for the brass ring on the carousel,” said Howard H. Marshall, manager of the Baltimore County Workforce Development Center in Hunt Valley. “A lot of people are grabbing for it, and only few will get it.”

Jan W. Saurbaugh, 57, a former computer specialist who lives in Timonium, Md., started working at 14, when he got a paper route. By 19, he had joined the Marines. For most of his life, he has worked steadily, shifting with life’s circumstances and the economic currents.

After leaving the military, he trained and worked as a welder. When neck injuries from an auto accident left him unable to do that, he went to community college to learn computer-assisted drafting, which led to seven years of work with the Coast Guard in Baltimore. Saurbaugh, who exudes an old-school formality with his ramrod straight posture, tightly knotted necktie and neatly pressed corduroys, said he made the mistake of his career when he left his drafting job for a computer-related Coast Guard job in Washington. The position was officially designated as temporary but offered an immediate $12,000-a-year increase over his $38,000 salary and the promise of more raises.

“One guy told me, ‘I’ve been on temporary status with the federal government 13 years, and I’ve always had a job,’ ” Saurbaugh said, which put his misgivings to rest. But then Saurbaugh faced what he called a “bad turn of events.”

Scrambling to complete his bachelor’s degree, Saurbaugh found himself getting little sleep and struggling with the commute to Washington. He developed a sleep disorder that caused him to miss significant time at work. Nine months after taking the job, he resigned under pressure. A sheaf of commendations and awards he had accumulated with the Coast Guard could not save his job.

“I was devastated that I didn’t have work,” Saurbaugh said. “But I figured I was just a couple of months away from my degree. I figured once I had it, somebody would pick me up.”

That was more than two years ago. In between, he has worked only three months — at a car dealership where a childhood friend is a manager. “I sold eight cars a month for three months. That wasn’t cutting it. I am just not a car salesman,” he said.

Saurbaugh, whose wife is partially disabled, has sold his camper and drained his retirement accounts and is now dependent on family for survival. His elderly in-laws took a home-equity loan to pay the mortgage on his three-bedroom Cape Cod, and his brother-in-law pays for the couple’s health insurance. “I thought by this time in my life, I’d be the one peeling off a few bills for someone,” he said. “I hate asking people for money.”

He said that if he doesn’t find work soon, he will have to sell his house. Saurbaugh said he has looked for jobs everywhere, even applying at electronics stores and bulk-office-supply businesses. But, so far, nothing.

“I keep telling my wife: ‘Things are going to work out. They’ll work out,” he said, shaking his head. “But they haven’t.”

This article comes from BND.com. Each weekday at 6:18 a.m., Don Windsor punches in for work at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in St. Louis to begin his shift on the F-15 production line.For Windsor, who lives in Swansea, this is a labor of love. The 63-year-old sheet metal worker has been building warplanes since he graduated from high school more than four decades ago. He wants to keep working until his 97-year-old father turns 100 and comes into the plant to walk him out.

“I’m living a dream,” he says.

For Boeing, Windsor is more than just an employee. He is a natural resource, with a vast store of knowledge and skills that he often uses to mentor younger workers. But, at the same time, Windsor is also part of a vanishing breed.

Roughly a quarter of the nation’s 637,000 aerospace workers could be eligible for retirement this year, raising fears among both industry and union leaders that America may be facing a serious skills shortage in the factories that churn out both commercial and military aircraft.

“It’s a looming issue that’s getting more serious year by year,” says Marion Blakey, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association. “These are real veterans. It’s a hard work force to replace.”

The association, which represents aircraft manufacturers and suppliers, has designated the potential skills drain as one of its top 10 priorities in this year’s presidential race. And one of the major unions that represent aerospace workers is also aggressively embracing the issue in a rare alliance between labor and management.

“It’s not a problem that’s coming,” says Frank Larkin, spokesman for the 720,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “It’s here.”

The issue especially resonates in aircraft manufacturing centers such as the St. Louis metropolitan area, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in North Texas, the Puget Sound region in Washington, and Wichita, Kan., which bills itself as the “Air Capital of the World.”

Mindful of the ominous demographic trends, community leaders in those cities, working in tandem with industry and labor groups, are pushing initiatives to cultivate the next generation of aerospace workers. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other industry giants are also conducting aggressive recruitment programs in schools and colleges.

Nationally, the aerospace work force is clearly growing older as the baby boom generation prepares to step into retirement.

Ten years ago, the industry’s largest age group was 35 to 44. In 2007, nearly 60 percent of the work force was 45 or older. At least 20 percent were between the ages of 55 to 64 and many if not most were already eligible for retirement, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. An additional 2 percent — or 12,203 employees — were 65 or older.

The problem is essentially one of supply and demand. Both the commercial and military segments of the industry are enjoying a robust growth period, with sales expected to increase by $12 billion this year. The demand for aerospace, electrical, mechanical and computer engineering disciplines this year is expected to be double what it was 10 years ago.

But analysts and corporate bosses say that colleges and universities are turning out far too few engineering and aeronautical graduates to fill future vacancies. Public schools’ poor record in teaching math and science is another worry. And, while the boomers were aging, the birthrate declined, resulting in a diminished pool of replacements.

Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University professor who served as chief economist for the Labor Department, says the problem may ultimately be resolved by market forces. But, for the moment, he says, “it won’t be painless, and some real adjustments may have to occur.”

Although production workers in aerospace earn higher pay than those in most other manufacturing industries — an average of $1,153 a week, according to the Department of Labor — Holzer says the industry doesn’t have the recruitment appeal that it did decades ago during the Cold War. Many young job-seekers, he says, now regard aerospace plants as “old-fashioned industries.”

Don’t try telling that to Don Windsor. Aerospace provided a comfortable life, helped him put two daughters through college (one is getting a doctorate) and made him a productive contributor to national security from the Vietnam War through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He went to work for McDonnell Aircraft, which later became McDonnell Douglas, in July 1963 when he was 18. He remained at the plant after McDonnell merged with Boeing and ultimately helped make more than 5,000 airplanes, from Vietnam-era F-4 Phantoms to F15s.

In shop parlance, Windsor is a SMAR, sheet metal assembler and riveter, or in more simple terms, “a drill ‘em and fill ‘em guy.” He is on the first page of the seniority list, has attended more than his share of farewell parties for retiring colleagues and somberly remembers old friends who “passed away already.”

Windsor could have retired when he was 50, but he has soldiered on, fulfilling a teenage dream to work on the giant assembly line across the river from his home and build airplanes. He has also helped others follow in his footsteps by sharing his know-how with younger workers.

“I can’t tell you how many people I have trained over here,” he said.

Thomas Pinski of Edwardsville, another Boeing worker who is also communicator for District 837 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, says long-timers like Windsor have instincts that can’t be taught in training sessions or through job manuals. Pinski, 47, calls it “tribal knowledge.”

“It’s not written down anywhere. Johnny knows it because he’s been doing it for 40 years,” Pinski says hypothetically. Consequently, he says, it is important to bring in younger workers before the wave of impending retirements claim men and women who also serve as teachers.

“You’re going to bring in younger guys to learn the ropes,” he says. But, he adds, “In a lot of cases, they don’t get them in the front door before Johnny leaves out the back door.”

Boeing, the largest manufacturer in Missouri with 16,000 employees, also serves as a major source of employment for job seekers from Illinois. More than 1,900 Boeing workers in St. Louis are from Southern Illinois, including 120 who live in Belleville. A third of the 9,800 union members in District 837 come from Illinois, says Pinski.

Michael Vesel, 47, who lives in O’Fallon, went to work for Boeing as an operation research analyst after ending a 22-year career in the Air Force in 2001. His wife, Lt. Col. Jane Hendricks-Vesel, is commander of the internal medicine flight at Scott Air Force Base.

Vesel, who commutes about 40 minutes to work each morning, said he decided to begin his new career in industry to continue “contributing to national defense.” He says he often turns to senior workers for advice.

“Their depth and breadth of knowledge in their field is so great, they’re always the go-to guys for questions from us younger guys,” says Vesel. “It takes years and years to develop the kind of knowledge these guys have.”

Matt Aubuchon, director of human resources at the St. Louis plant, quarrels with the prediction that a quarter of the national aerospace workforce could retire this year, saying the number seems high. About 15 percent of the St. Louis workforce is eligible for retirement and an undetermined number will likely stay on, he said.

Like other major aerospace giants, Boeing has numerous initiatives to create what Aubuchon calls a “lifelong learning culture,” including mentoring programs and technology discussion groups to bring senior engineers together with junior colleagues.

Boeing also works with scores of colleges and universities to bolster aerospace recruitment and contributes to Project Lead the Way, a national program to steer high school and middle-school students into careers in engineering and technology.

Although Boeing’s St. Louis plant is the area’s biggest aerospace job magnet, smaller defense-oriented companies are scattered through the St. Louis metropolitan region on both sides of the river, including 45 vendors and suppliers in Southern Illinois that do $2.4 million worth of business with Boeing.

About 5,700 civilians work at Scott Air Force Base, the largest employer in the metro-east. Herman Koester, 68, of Belleville, works at the edge of the base at TRI-COR Industries, a defense contractor that does information-technology work at Scott.

At 68, Koester describes himself as a pre-baby boomer and FBI — “farm boy from Illinois” — who has spent more than three decades in aerospace. Like other older aerospace workers, he pre-dates the computer era but steadily adapted to technological advances by reading and digging through the Internet.

Younger colleagues in their 20s often ask him questions, he said, and he tries to help without appearing arrogant.

One of them once told him: “When you have something to say, it behooves us to listen.”

Our last post for this week comes from MarketWatch. Baby boomers will be in a unique position in the years ahead, says Tamara Erickson, an expert on the workforce and organizational behavior, and the author of a soon-to-be published “Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation.”

Boomers will live two, perhaps three decades beyond the traditional retirement age of 65, much longer than generations past. They will be able to find work more easily during the so-called third phase of their lives as there will be more jobs than workers.

They will likely be able to negotiate the terms of their employment, with flexibility and customization the order of the day. And if all that isn’t enough, they - long past their child-rearing years — will enjoy their relationships with their adult children in ways not yet imagined.

To be sure, boomers’ outlook will vary depending on their income level and their health status. Some may be forced to work less-than-ideal jobs simply to support themselves, while others may be forced out of work by unexpected health problems.

For the lucky ones who have some choice about what they do next, successfully navigating this next phase of their lives will require some work.

Re-think the time ahead

 First, boomers need to re-examine several core assumptions about what the world might be like over the next 30 to 40 years and then re-imagine what their life might be like. “They have to react to the idea of having time,” Erickson said in an interview.

Instead of spending 90% of their so-called retirement years in leisure mode, they will need to think about spending more of their retirement years being productive, pursuing their dreams, doing something they have always wanted to do. “The reality is that talent will be in short supply, so they should be able to do whatever they want to do,” said Erickson.

But how does one choose what to do among the seemingly endless possibilities?

Erickson suggests boomers develop a guide to think through what is likely to be most important and appealing to them over the years ahead. “Once formed, as you come across various possibilities, as new options present themselves, these frameworks will help you gauge the attractiveness of each,” she writes in her book.

“As you go through the process of making change in real time, it helps to know yourself well, to be sufficiently in touch with your desires and preferences that you’ll be able to recognize appropriate and appealing opportunities for you as they unfold.”

Erickson recommends two frameworks that are “powerful determinants of career satisfaction.” One is the “career curve,” which helps boomers determine the amount of time and energy they want to devote to work. The other is something she calls “life lures,” which helps boomers identify the passion they have for a career or activity.

The traditional career curve had people moving along a predictable path, climbing up the corporate ladder slowly over time until they retire. But that career curve makes little sense today, she says. Today, boomers need a career curve that looks more bell-shaped than cliff-shaped. Erickson recommends considering the following when building a career curve:

• Time: Amount of time you’d like to devote to work and the role you’d like it to play in the mosaic of your life’s other activities.
• Rhythm: The structure and variety of your ideal work arrangements, including the degree of spontaneity, predictability and focus.
• Economic reality: The role that compensation from work needs to play in your personal finances going forward.
• Challenge: The extent to which you do (or don’t) want to take on difficult or challenging roles at this point, including the level of commitment you would be willing to make to learn a new skill.
• Responsibility: The degree to which you are willing to take on roles that directly affect others, including assuming managerial tasks.

According to Erickson, the most common archetypes the career curve produces are intellectual (project contractor or consultant), customer-facing (retail), behind-the-scenes (customer service or technical support), interdependent (managerial), change agent (charitable), or entrepreneur (startup).

What grabs you?

For life lures, boomers should think about the four key elements that affect their engagement with their work. “Each of these should be part of your reflections as you develop a framework for evaluating opportunities that represent the strongest life lure,” according to Erickson’s book.

• Content: How do you like to work?
• Compensation: What do you want, broadly, in return?
• Connection: How do you want to interact with the company?
• Communication: What core values do you want to share with the organization and its leaders?

Erickson identifies six different archetypes of people’s preferences along those dimensions:

• Expressive legacy: Work is about creating something with lasting value.
• Secure progress: Work is about upward mobility; a predictable, upward path to success.
• Individual expertise and team victory: Work is an opportunity to be a valuable part of a winning team.
• Risk with reward: Work is an opportunity for challenge, change, learning, and maybe wealth.
• Flexible support: Work is a livelihood but not currently a priority in our lives.
• Limited obligations: Work’s value is largely its near-term economic gain.

By coupling the two filters, the career curve, which helps boomers figure out how they want to work, and the life lures, which helps boomers understand why they want to work, boomers should be able to home in on their second careers.

“Extraordinary engagement lies in the heart,” Erickson writes in her book, “and the key is finding a company or volunteer organization that shares your core values, priorities, and work environment priorities.”

 Robert Powell has been a journalist covering personal finance issues for more than 20 years, writing and editing for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Mutual Fund Market News.