(From Management Issues) -- Globalization offers business immense possibilities: bigger markets, more sources of innovation, and – in theory, at least – a wider, deeper pool of talent. That's the good news.

The bad news, though, is that large parts of the world are already facing talent gaps. Even with the downturn-driven workforce surplus we currently have, many organizations are still finding it difficult to find workers with the right skills and talents to meet their needs.

Last year more than half of the CEOs questioned by DDI, a global talent management business, said that their talent pipeline was not growing fast enough, while other surveys find that organizations are already facing enormous difficulties in finding and keeping the people they need to grow their businesses. Some 68 percent of organizations report that they struggle to fill vacancies, while 55 percent face challenges in keeping the employees they do have.

And the really bad news is that this situation is going to get worse. A lot worse. In the years to come four key pressures will make these challenges ever more difficult.

The aging population

The first issue affecting talent is simple demographics: populations are getting older. By 2050 the number of people aged 65 and above in the G7 and BRIC nations will have doubled, while China will see the number of workers supporting each senior citizen drop from 10 to 2.5. Rethinking retirement will provide some of the shortfall, but only some of it: the proportion of the workforce available to work will steadily decrease.

Increased demand

The other side of this coin is that to support this aging population, we are going to need more workers, and lots of them. In fact, to sustain economic growth the US will require an additional 25 million workers by 2030, and Western Europe will require a staggering additional 45 million workers.

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