the 1990s will be different. In most of the big OECD countries the total workforce will continue to grow, but there will be a shortage of your, skilled workers. A return to the mass-union power of the 1970s looks unlikely. But the shortage of younger workers will mean that companies in America, Japan and Europe will have to find new ways to attract, develop, motivate, reward and retain employees.
The "demographic time bomb" may be well hidden. For a start a small recession in the early 1990s, should it come, will lengthen dole queues again. But unless the world economy goes badly wrong, the labour shortage is sure to worsen in the 1990s. Consider: