🔒CT’s aging population poses opportunities, threats

This week, the Hartford Business Journal wrapped up its year-long “Connecticut's Silver Tsunami” series, which took an in-depth look at the business and economic implications of the state's aging population.

HBJ published about two dozen stories on the topic. More recent installments focused on Connecticut business owner's lack of succession planning and the push to recruit urban students to replace an aging workforce.

What did we learn? First, Connecticut's aging population will have a far-reaching impact on our economy and lack of planning and strategizing by business leaders and policymakers to confront the issue will further constrain Connecticut's economic competiveness.

Private-public partnerships will need to be further developed among industry, government and educational institutions to ensure we are training and educating the future workforce in in-demand careers. We've highlighted many of these efforts over the last year, including in this week's issue, where we detail Professional Insurance Agents of Connecticut Inc., working with Goodwin College in East Hartford, to help train students for insurance careers through insurance-specific course work and paid externships.

Job growth will be another key. Connecticut's population has been dwindling in recent years as residents move to lower-tax states with warmer climates and greater job-growth prospects. The state can't simply rely on its own residents to fill future job vacancies. We need the ability to attract the best and brightest minds from around country and world to remain competitive. Only then will employers large and small be comfortable firmly implanting their roots in the state.

But that job growth will only come when the state gets its fiscal house in order and creates a business landscape that has fair and predictable taxes and regulations. Many would argue we aren't yet close to that happy medium.

Last week the state legislature took baby steps towards recognizing the need for a competitive business environment, when it provided modest business tax relief including modifications to the controversial unitary reporting system for corporate taxes, among other measures. But with more significant deficits looming, Connecticut's structural budget woes haven't been rectified and businesses have no assurances that the cost of doing business in Connecticut won't continue to rise. That's one of the chief concerns Fairfield-based General Electric has harbored during its search for a potential new corporate headquarters.

Connecticut offers a great quality of life with some of the best schools in the country, but our state's value proposition is severely diminished with a high cost of living that increasingly makes it more difficult for individuals, families and businesses to live and operate here. That's not rhetoric — it's a notion supported by fact: About 96,000 Connecticut residents moved out of the state in 2014, and we lost 13,285 more residents than we gained last year.

Another key lesson we learned was the need to leverage the skills, talents and knowledge of our older workers. Too often we read about companies letting go veteran employees at the top of the pay scale in order to cut costs, but there will come a tipping point when the loss of that institutional knowledge will severely damage companies.

Several organizations in Connecticut, including Leadership Greater Hartford and Capital Workforce Partners, are running programs that aim to utilize the skills of older retired or unemployed workers, particularly helping them adopt their private-sector knowledge to help area nonprofits. It's a model that businesses should seriously consider when trying to figure out how to leverage their older workers.

Connecticut's aging population poses both threats and opportunities. It's the businesses and policymakers who are proactive in addressing the issue that will put the state in the best position to succeed long term. n