Must be that people and businesses are moving around the region, because based on the numbers of the following table, Lake County's population growth rate for the period 2000-2030 is projected at 2.1% or 0.07% per year. Natural increase (births over deaths) is down. Even though there is some positive in-migration it is not enough to offset the decline in natural increase.

Population and Labor

LABOR SUPPLY By 2011, a huge shift in the national population is expected as the oldest baby boomers hit 65. The 78 million Americans born in the 18-year span of 1946 to 1964 will be hard to replace. One reason: Only 90 million Americans were born in the 25 years that followed, not enough to fill baby boomers' shoes and handle job growth, including 20 million white-collar jobs by 2013.

Immigrants will help make up the difference, accounting for 20% of new workers and coming mostly from Mexico, Central America and Asia.

Take a look at the age profile of the workforce in 2012. Older employees will rise nearly 50% (those age 55 and older). Their numbers will total 31 million, up by about 10 million from now.

Prime-age workers will grow only about 5% (those ages 25 to 54). That will be an increase of about 5 million, for a total of 106 million.

Entry level workers will increase about 9%, ages 16 to 24. There will be 24 million of them in the workforce, a gain of 2 million.

Service industries will generate most of the new jobs. Fastest growth area: health care, physician assistants, physical therapist aides, health recordkeepers, and home health care aides.

In addition, computer network systems and communications analysts, software engineers and human services and social service workers.

Jobs with the fastest-growing wages will include software publishers, consultants to management, home health care aides for the elderly, employment services workers and specialists in career training and ambulatory care. Other top gainers: Child day care workers, internet service and internet data processors and experts in the design of computer systems.

There'll be fewer manufacturing jobs in the next 10 years, but nowhere near the losses of the previous decade. Employment will slip about 1%, not much compared with a nearly 9% drop over the past decade. Productivity gains will keep output growing despite the job losses.

Source: Kiplinger

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When the protesting children of the '60s realized that government was the very place to reress social issues, their view of those institutions changed. Certainly following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they became believers in the redemptive power of the legislatures and courts.

At the same time, conservatives rekindled their belief in free enterprise and the destructive power of big government. Their criticisms are expressed in a number of ways, including the perpetuation of the idea that government has caused our societal problems through legislation backed up by the court system. It's no wonder that the number of judges who have been threatened or harmed has increased recently.

The idea that government is our enemy serves no one well and is a dangerous notion to encourage. Liberals learned their lesson in the '60s and it's time for conservatives to do the same.

Source: American City and Country 4/05

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