What happens when the pool of younger workers diminishes in your organization and older, more experienced workers are no longer accessible because it did not proactively consider their importance?
Put differently, like what is happening with DOGE, what happens when too many experienced people disappear by virtue of being terminated?
Demographic Tidal Wave
According to the World Economic Forum, workers in G7 countries aged 55 and older will exceed 25% of the workforce by 2031. That’s nearly ten percentage points higher than in 2011, mainly because society is aging while the birthrate is plummeting.
For example, in the U.S., the labor force of people aged 16 to 24 will shrink by 7.5 percent by 2030.
Organizations will need older people to continue working to sustain productivity and economic gaps. As a leader, you must start addressing the inevitable demographic tidal waves now so that smoother sailing occurs when they hit.
Organizations like yours will face immense pressure from the demographic workforce change that is about to upend society. Mid-level managers are just one of those issues.
Mid-Management Mayhem
One particular demographic issue to contend with relates specifically to mid-level managers.
The mid-manager cohort will inevitably become even more stressed by picking up the slack of missing employees. These leaders will turn into a desperate form of mid-management mayhem.
Present-day mid-level leaders are already being stretched like never before.
As the demographic tidal wave strikes in the near future, managers who used to anchor operations will shoulder even more of the workload. Retirements (or involuntary exits) among older team members and the shrinking number of younger employees will further overwhelm mid-level roles, managing the responsibilities of both ends of the spectrum.
This imbalance becomes an unruly systemic issue. Consulting firm Capterra discovered that 71% of middle managers are already “sometimes” or “always” feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or burned out at work.
If you dig deeper into the research specific to leaders currently 35 years old or younger, it jumps to 75%.
A 2023 study by the UKG Workforce Institute also revealed that 57% of middle managers wished they had known what they were getting into before stepping into their leadership roles.
Does that feel like a good start to handling the demographic workforce transition?
Boeing
We need only look at Boeing, which vividly illustrates how strained things can get.
A wave of retirements post-pandemic among experienced machinists at the company left middle managers scrambling to hire, onboard, and train new recruits—a job they were doing on top of their “normal” leadership duty to balance production deadlines for building new airplanes. Many of the surge of recruits had no aerospace experience. I’m no astronaut, but that does not sound good.
After repeated quality issues, including the door of an Alaska Airlines plane popping out mid-flight on January 5, 2024, Boeing began an internal investigation.
“We heard repeatedly from experienced employees that, ‘We are maxed out training these new people,’” Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s quality chief, told The Wall Street Journal.
Warning Signs
The collision of waning expertise at Boeing and the scrambling addition of fresh but inexperienced talent created adverse ripple effects throughout the company. Delayed timelines, operational lapses, flying doors, and strained mid-management leaders became a reality. It seemed inevitable that another catastrophe would ensue with Boeing’s airplanes.
Extend the argument to mid-level managers across any organization. Your organization. What happens when seasoned and experienced employees depart, and no one is around to help fill the knowledge gap for the inexperienced replacements?
Doors pop off airplanes mid-flight, and mid-level managers become even more stressed.
Organizations ignoring the demographic shift risk facing operational chaos, quality meltdowns, and productivity collapses. Leaders must actively value, retain, and leverage the knowledge of experienced workers—or brace for turbulence far worse than a loose airplane door.
The burden on mid-managers should not be viewed as some distant issue tucked away on a future agenda either. It’s here, now—and worsening fast.
As seasoned employees walk out (or are walked out, like in the case of DOGE), mid-managers fill gaps and desperately train replacements (or internal backfills who themselves are taking on more work) who aren’t ready. It’s a double whammy: losing expertise and being forced into perpetual onboarding mode.
The toll of that pressure is immediate and exhausting.
The demographic apocalypse will eventually engulf mid-level managers. They will become the exhausted first responders scrambling to hold everything together.
The question is not whether your mid-managers will succumb to this pressure, but rather when they will.