Nearly 40,000 Virginia employees will become eligible for retirement over the next decade, leaving some agencies with a potentially crippling loss of their most experienced staffers, a report from the Virginia Department for the Aging says.
The looming baby boomer retirements will be felt across the state work force, according to the report, but some departments said it could strike them more severely and quickly.
The Virginia Department of Education said it would face “critical shortages from expected retirements and turnover” in the next two years.
The Department of Social Services warned that “the loss of staff, leadership and institutional knowledge could hobble the agency, especially if a large number of employee retirements occur at the same time.”
More than 25 percent of the Department of Corrections’ workers will be able to retire in the next five years.
Not all of those employees will choose to leave the work force at once. An estimated 60 to 70 percent of baby boomers are expected to keep working after they reach retirement age, said Tony Hylton, spokesman for the Virginia office of AARP.
“On a broad basis, the boomers are indicating that they are going to stay in the work force longer,” Hylton said.
If current retirement rates stay on track for the next 10 years, 38,400 state employees would reach eligibility with full benefits, the report said. That number excludes staff at the public colleges and universities who could be in other retirement plans.
About 80percent of the 88 agencies surveyed as part of the report, which was mandated by the General Assembly in 2007, are taking steps to deal with the potential exodus of their older workers, the report found. Some departments, however, “are concerned but did not report any succession planning activities.”
