9-27-2019 Handout Elder Boom Worker Shortage

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The Washington Post Business 'This will be e families face elder boom, 1 shortage preview 1'nation'sfuture By Jeff Stein August 14 at 7:31 PM DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Janet Flaherty got an alarming call last October from the agency tasked with coordinating in-home care for her 82 -year-old mother. It could no longer send her mom's home caretaker. It knew of no other aides who could care for her mother, either. Flaherty's mother, Caroline, has for two years qualified for in-home care paid for by the state's Medicaid program. But the agency could not find someone to hire amid a severe shortage of workers that has crippled facilities for seniors across the state. With private help now bid up to $5o an hour, Janet and her two sisters have been forced to do what millions of families in a rapidly aging America have done: take up second, unpaid jobs caring full time for their mother. "We do not know what to do. We do not know where to go. We are in such dire need of help," said Flaherty, an insurance saleswoman. Across Maine, families like the Flahertys are being hammered by two slow-moving demographic forces — the growth of the retirement population and a simultaneous decline in young workers — that have been exacerbated by a national worker shortage pushing up the cost of labor. The unemployment rate in Maine is 3.2 percent, below the national average of 3.7 percent. The disconnect between Maine's aging population and its need for young workers to care for that population is expected to be mirrored in states throughout the country over the coming decade, demographic experts say. And that's especially true in states'with populations with