And the all-too-common problem is that firms haven't prepared for the necessary knowledge transfer when those boomer workers do retire. If you've got a millwright who's been working in the same plant for forty years since it opened, he'll know every detail of how things work, where things don't match the schematics, what's been tried and how well that worked out. You can't just start that process when they turn in their two-weeks' notice; you've got to have somebody or somebodies working as assistants, and you've got to pay them adequately to keep them around. Nobody wants to do that.
