Retirement: Delayed Wave?

Here are two headlines that jumped out at me this morning:

• Public Sector Workers Saving Less (Fedsmith)
• Area Leads Nation in Putting Off Retirement (Washington Post)

Coincidence? I doubt it, although the Post story focuses on private-sector workers. Taken together, though, both articles raise the question of whether the effects of the baby boom retirement wave in the federal sector that everybody's worried about will be mitigated by an increase in the number of people who delay retirement.

Of course, even if that turned out to be true, it would be shortsighted of agencies to get complacent and assume they're going to dodge a bullet. At best, they'll get a little more time to plan for an orderly transition to the workforce of the future. And as we've been reporting for awhile, that process will play out differently at every agency.