It's not as simple a question as thinking that because older workers are the most productive, if they leave the workforce, productivity is going to decline. It doesn't work like that any more than the least productive companies exiting the market via bankruptcy increasing productivity. Productivity reflects some fundamental forces about the capital tools that are available to workers and the training they have. These are the real determinants. The fact that a certain cohort with relatively low human capital leaves actually creates opportunity for youth.
As we talked about, youth today have never had more training. More youth than ever before have university skills. We've always had a great deal of post-secondary training in this country, but that shifted a great deal in the last decade. Community colleges have fallen into disfavour and we have more and more university-trained youth. Our immigrants are selected for their economic qualifications, so we have a lot of skilled people coming into replace these people.The question is how to facilitate that transition. But obviously we're having some problems in the short term. As we've mentioned, youth unemployment is surprisingly high, and we don't fully understand why.