'We're better off hiring skilled immigrants': Alan Greenspan hits out at young American workforce that 'doesn't shape up' to baby boom generation



Hitting out at Generation X: Former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan has said America's young workforce paled in comparison to their baby boomer counterparts

Former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has lashed out at America's younger workforce, saying they don't match up to the 'baby boom' generation.



Mr Greenspan said the U.S. is in the process of seeing the baby boomers, which he called 'the most productive, highly skilled, educated part of our labour force' retire.

'They are being replaced by groups of young workers who have regrettably scored rather poorly in international educational match-ups over the last two decades,' he added in the interview with Globalist.

He went on to say how the average income of U.S. households headed by 25-year-olds and younger had been declining in comparison to the average income of the baby boomer population.

'This is a reasonably good indication that the productivity of the younger part of our workforce is declining relative to the level of productivity achieved by the retiring baby boomers,' he said adding: 'This raises some major concerns about the productive skills of our future U.S. labour force.'

Mr Greenspan then suggested it would be better for America to hire skilled immigrants to counter the worrying trend.

'Most high-income people in our country do not realise that their incomes are being subsidised by their protection from competition from highly skilled people who are prevented from immigrating to the United States,' he said.

'But we need such skills in order to staff our productive economy, so that the standard of living for Americans as a whole can grow.



'My view is that we should give a green card to every immigrant who gets an advanced degree in the United States.

'The proportion of those people who will be terrorists is minuscule. That would have a major positive economic impact.'

Mr Greenspan argued that societies with the most advanced, cutting-edge technologies tended to have the highest standards of living throughout history.