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Baby-bust families may have plenty of money to spend, however, because jobs should be plentiful. Whereas many older workers are now losing jobs as corporate America slashes payrolls in cost-inspired restructuring, the smaller number of baby busters will fare much better than the overcrowded group of baby boomers. The number of newcomers entering the job market is expected to drop from 1.9 million this year to 1.3 million in 1992, a record low 1% growth in the work force.
With less talent available for corporations to choose from, employers may offer larger salaries and more responsibility to promising college graduates. Ambitious baby-bust workers could find the path to promotion a little less crowded than it has been for baby boomers. Says Peter Morrison, a population analyst at the Rand Corp.: "Baby busters will in general have more of a choice ((in the job market)) and better prospects for advancement than the previous generation."
The Federal Government will have to pay more to maintain its volunteer military. The pool of eligible recruits for the armed forces will shrink from 9.5 million people in 1986 to 7.8 million by 1996. The Pentagon nevertheless expects to meet its recruitment goals, but the competition with private industry will be intense for entry-level jobholders. As the supply of younger workers declines, civilian and military employers will be forced to offer . education and training to make better use of potential recruits. By 1990, predicts the National Alliance of Business, three out of every four jobs will require education or technical training beyond high school. The Navy has set up remedial-education programs at three training stations to nudge 22,000 of its 100,000 recruits beyond eighth-grade comprehension in reading, math and science. Says retired Admiral James Watkins, former Chief of Naval Operations who now heads the Navy's Personal Excellence and National Security program: "Everyone's scrapping for the same declining resources."
Waves of immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- will help fill the demand for new workers. Leon Bouvier, visiting professor at Tulane's School of Public Health, predicts that in Texas, New York, California, Illinois and Florida the growth in the labor force in the first 30 years of the next century will be almost entirely made up of women and immigrants.
The infusion of at least 50 million foreigners into the U.S. during the next century will be the reason the population will continue to expand even if the birthrate stays in its present trough. Although the birthrate has risen slightly in the 1980s, the increase has been caused chiefly by the large number of baby-boom women of childbearing age. Immigrant communities tend to grow faster than the U.S. population at large; Hispanics in the U.S., for example, should increase at a rate of 3% a year until the end of this century. Even allowing for that, the U.S. fertility rate, now 1.8 children per woman, is expected to remain below the "replacement rate" of 2.1. One grim projection: by 2014, deaths will exceed births in the U.S.