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Even before the financial crisis, many baby boomers hadn't saved enough for retirement. Then stocks plummeted. In 1998, the average 50-year-old who had been working for at least 10 years had a 401(k) balance of $85,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Factor in the recent market drop, and more than a decade later, that worker's 401(k) has grown to just $93,000. In short, we keep getting older, but our 401(k) balances, they stay the same.

"Fearing a shortage of qualified managers as business picks up, some companies are bolstering leadership-development efforts. Layoffs and training cutbacks in the past two years have thinned manager pipelines. And employers worry that baby boomers who postponed retirement during the recession will start to depart as recovering stock prices reinflate retirement funds."

"We read in newspaper headlines that the economy may have permanently lost 20 million jobs, that 70 million "baby-boomers" are ready to retire, that 50 percent of the workforce will be people of color by 2028, that younger workers are changing careers five to seven times, that America is losing its half-century of global economic dominance and that the global skills gap is worsening. The US workplace is experiencing radical transformational changes. These changes will require new skill-sets for future career success and to start closing the non-competitive skills gap."

Big U.S. employers, worried about replacing retiring baby boomers, are wading deeper into education and growing bolder about telling educators how to run their business.

By 2019, Generation X - that relatively small cohort born from 1965 to 1978 - will have spent nearly two decades bumping up against a gray ceiling of boomers in senior decision-making jobs. But that will end. Janet Reid, managing partner at Global Lead, a consulting firm that advises companies like PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, says, "In 2019, Gen X will finally be in charge. And they will make some big changes."