ative Action, designed to assure such an outcome. Further, it has become an unfortunate political tactic to pander to such concerns by attempting to dismantle or starve such programs. Lastly, the federal judiciary, while recognizing the merit of the intent of such programs, increasingly is ruling against the ways in which such programs are implemented and administered.
As a consequence of these conflicting trends, managers and public administrators in the last years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century must be prepared to develop innovative approaches to the problem of managing diversity in public organizations. At about the same time that most employers are beginning to deal effectively with the issue associated with diversity in the workplace, however, the Hudson Institute has issued a new reportùWorkforce 2020. Workforce 2020 alerts the nation and its employers to some newly emerging issues with which they must prepare to deal. Further, the authors of Workforce 2020 warn that the crunch associated with these emerging issues will begin around 2010.
One of the more significant of the projections presented in Workforce 2020 is that by 2010 employers will be required to turn to older workers to fill their human resource requirements. In 1980, as an example, new entrants comprised 18 percent of the nation's workforce. By 1997, however, new entrants accounted for only seven-percent of the workforce. Compounding the effects of this trend is the aging of the baby-boomer generation. By 2010, baby-boomers will begin reaching the present retirement age of 65, and the number of new entrants into the workforce will be insufficient to replace the baby-boomers should they retire. As a consequence of the intersection of these two trends that is projected to occur in 2010, employers will be forced to attempt to recruit older workers to fill their human resource requirements.
Defining human re...