Reflection on yesterday's class

Yesterday in class, one of the prominent issues talked about that impacted me was the aging population and its effect on the future of our economy. Currently, people are working at older ages than they have in the past, due to financial hardships related to the recession and other factors. Still, within the next 10 to 20 years, there will be a lot of jobs opening up without enough to fill them. We talked in class about the strain this is to HR professionals due to the intense planning and training that needs to occur to survive the coming trend.
This discussion changed my thinking about the role of HR professionals and the responsibility I have to get myself into a position where I can accept a mid-to-high management level job during that time. While I am excited about the prospect of many high level executives retiring within the next ten years, I understand that for HR professionals this will pose a difficult task: to find enough well-trained leaders to carry the economy.
Another thing that was talked about in class was outsourcing and offshoring. The effects of having an expensive labor force, (older workers is one factor) has influenced companies to use these practices to decrease cost. I wonder how much this will continue to grow in popularity for production and manufacturing companies. I also wonder what industries that currently don't use these practices will begin to do so in the next few decades.