The baby boomers are doing it again.

They are beginning to change the employment market to a more positive one for people approaching their 60th birthday or past that benchmark, executive placement consultants indicate.

Since there are not enough younger people to replace them in many situations, older employees will remain in demand. Consultants said the trend should increase in the coming years as more baby boomers pass the 60 mark. This situation applies frequently but not always to older people currently employed, as well as to those looking for a position.

This changing picture over the last few years is often but not always in contrast to stories in national magazines and newspapers.

One example of the contrast comes from Russ Jones, a partner in the placement firm First Transitions in Oak Brook.

“I took offense at a story published in Fortune Magazine a few years ago with the title ‘Fired At 50,’” he said. “I wrote two letters, neither of which were published. There was no response from the people there.”

Jones said the magazine painted too bleak a picture by saying that people over 50 looking for a job had the choices of starting their own business, buying a franchise or jumping off a building.

The outlook for people around 60 years of age has improved in the last few years and will continue to be good, he said, because during the 1980s many companies reduced or eliminated layers of middle management.

Now as the first baby boomers approach what some people consider a retirement age of 62 or 65, Jones said “there is a lack of talent or readiness by younger people to fill their shoes.”

The oldest of that huge generation turned 60 in 2006 while the youngest of the boomers won’t reach 60 until 2024.

Roberta McQuade of HR Edge in Kildeer offered a similar assessment of the job outlook for people over 50.

“In many cases the segment of employees behind the baby boomers does not have sufficient wisdom or experience to fill positions which would be vacated by older employees,” she said.

“One thing I am pushing for one of my clients is half-time or two-thirds time for older employees. I am looking to come up with anything that will help the company retain older employees who are valued.”

She said the client is a medium-sized company with 1,000 employees in the electrical tools business.

McQuade shows the client some of the larger companies which have been most aggressive in finding ways to lengthen the time until retirement.

“Look around and see how many 50 to 60-year-old people are running businesses. Retirements of key people or their extension of time with a company are a definite issue in industries I deal with—aerospace, automotive and other manufacturers.”

For smaller companies this type of effort is often more difficult, according to the consultant, because there are not as many people to work with.

McQuade points out the steady nature of baby boomers in their jobs is a good factor, but by staying 15 to 20 years with one company, they “clogged up” the ranks of middle and upper level management and will create a “vacuum of experience” when they retire.

The clients of another consultant are becoming receptive in the last few years to these baby boomers. It is just that the experience of these older workers has become more valued that it had been in previous years, said Jim McSherry of McSherry and Associates in Westchester.

“There is a lot of talent out there from a lot of forced retirements,” he said, “and the talent comes at a reasonable price.”

As for differences between older men and older women looking for jobs, McSherry sees many more men.

“We see three times as many men as women, but we are a small company of five people working for clients in manufacturing and professional services,” he said. “For 20 searches we do, we look at 20 to 25 people and we present four people to the client.”

Even older people who have left the corporate world for a few years can find a job, according to First Transitions’ Jones. He cited the case of a 63-year-old man who spent two years buying houses, rehabilitating them and selling them or flipping them. When he decided to re-enter the market for hospital administrators he found a job within three months in a different state.

Jones explained that a key to this success was a realistic approach about his skill sets, what the job seeker was interested in and what sacrifices or changes he was willing to make. In this situation the geographic factor was important since the man broadened his job search to many states.

In cases within a local area, Jones added, that geographic factor could mean considering jobs which are farther than 30 minutes from where a person lives. How flexible a person is will depend on how quickly a job needs to be found.

These types of cases will only get more prevalent, Jones noted, as the tremendous growth of boomers opting out—or being forced out—of the job market continues.

Their sheer numbers alone, he said, should cause more employers to try to figure out how to use this tremendous pool of talent, knowledge and experience that is simply lacking in younger workers.