Older population increase in Idaho

It’s Older Americans Month, and statistics from the Research and Business Development Center in Rexburg shows that we have a large population of older people in our state.

Research shows there is a 10 to 30 percent increase in the population 65 and older, some counties even more than the national and state average.

“It’s a low cost of living state, so if you retire on higher wages somewhere else in the country. A lot of people are looking to Idaho as that location where they want to retire because that fixed income can stretch out a lot longer in a place like Idaho,” says Will Jenson, with the Research and Business Development Center.

But another reason is that people waited longer to retire.

“Baby boomers were a large portion of our workforce up until now and they’re reaching an age where it’s time to retire, the economy’s done well. Retirement portfolios have recovered from the 2008-2009 crashes in the stock markets,” says Jenson.

Which can be a problem in the job force.

“Other things that we’re seeing in Idaho is the number of workers available to replace those that are retiring is shrinking.”

“But now there’s more and more and more of them that are eligible to retire so when they do retire the wave of retirees is going to be significantly larger than if it had been dissipated over a ten-year span. So employers are kind of stressing out about what they’re going to do with that. That’s a lot of knowledge leaving the workforce and a lot of people leaving,” says Hope Morrow, Regional Economist with the Idaho Department of Labor.

There are ways to combat that with programs like apprenticeships and on-job training.

“They’re training with them, they’re spending time with them, they’re literally working to build up the skills for these jobs that they’re about to lose. Kind of one on one or in a group setting so that when that person leaves you [don’t] have to train them or bring someone in to train them,” says Morrow.

And the retirement population coming in is actually a good thing.

“Idaho is growing really fast it’s been one of the top growing states in the countries for a while and quite a bit of that can be contributed to these older people moving into Idaho and taking up residency,” says Jenson.