Manchester – New Hampshire's aging workforce is a growing concern for business, government and education, but older workers can be a rich resource for meeting employers' needs, several speakers at a conference N.H. Forum on the Future session said yesterday.

By 2015, one in five workers in the U.S. will be 55 or older, up from 13 percent in 2000 and employees 55 to 64 will be the fastest growing segment, said Deborah Russell, director of Workforce Issues for AARP.

A Towers Perrin study shows that 50-plus workers are more engaged as they age, Russell said, and highly engaged workers correlate with overall performance of the company. "It does in fact speak to the bottom line," she said.

"Boomers are going to reinvent retirement and are going to work longer, either because they want to or they have to, and this should be good news for employers," she said.

Yesterday, AARP released a survey of New Hampshire businesses that showed 60 percent of employers believe their business is likely to face a shortage of qualified workers in the next five years. By a similar majority, businesses believe it is important to retain institutional knowledge held by employees who retire or leave.

But only 10 percent of employers having taken steps to prepare for a worker shortage and only 20 percent have a formal process to capture institutional knowledge, the survey found.

Brian J. Gottlob, of PolEcon Research in Dover, said there are reasons for optimism.

"In New Hampshire, we are wealthier and healthier than most states, and that's the big reason why we have aged a little bit faster," Gottlob said.

"In the '80s and the '90s ... we attracted an awful lot of people in their 30s and 40s. Twenty years later, they are in their 60s," he said. "So that accumulated talent ... is now reaching retirement age."

Jim Reidy, an attorney with Sheehan Phinney Bass and Green, said the average award won in age discrimination cases is $270,000 and out of court settlements cost businesses an average of $60,000.

Documentation will rebut a claim if it can show there was a legitimate business reason for a layoff or firing of an older worker, he said. "There is a choreography to terminations and layoffs that must be followed," Reidy said.

Fred Kocher, president of N.H. High Technology Council, one of the co-sponsors of yesterday's event at The Highlander Inn Conference Center, said the issue affects jobs for engineers and technicians. "We have one member company that has 25 openings ... for engineers, some with six figure salaries, and for entry-level technicians.

They couldn't find (qualified applicants) among the younger employees, so they're hiring older employees who have been laid off by other companies or asking employees that had retired to come back in order to fill those positions, and they're going overseas of course to get talent over there and bringing them in here on H1B visas," he said.

The gap between younger employees that are technically trained and older workers headed for retirement is getting bigger not smaller, Kocher said.

"It's a demographic change that the high-tech companies, especially manufacturing companies that are labor intensive, are going to have to start to face."

Tom Horgan, president of N.H. College and University Council, another forum sponsor, said, "Aging demographics in New Hampshire are a major concern."

Although college and university enrollments are currently at a peak, the kindergarten through grade 12 population is declining and colleges could face declining enrollments as early as 2008, Horgan said yesterday.

Besides facing a declining pool of graduating seniors, the colleges face a rapidly aging workforce, he said.

The state will be at a competitive disadvantage because of the high cost of housing and relatively low salaries in higher education, he said.

"The challenge is to bring in new faculty members," Horgan said.

Those factors are driving colleges to look outside New Hampshire for new students, including continuing education students, through technology and distance education, Horgan said.