They make up more than half your workforce. They work longer hours than anyone else in your company. From their ranks come most of your top managers. They're your mid-career employees, the solid citizens between the ages of 35 and 55 whom you bank on for their loyalty and commitment. And they're not happy. In fact, they're burned out, bored, and bottlenecked, new research reveals. Only 33% of the 7,700 workers the authors surveyed feel energized by their work; 36% say they're in dead-end jobs. One in three is not satisfied with his or her job. One in five is looking for another. Welcome to middlescence. Like adolescence, it can be a time of frustration, confusion, and alienation. But it can also be a time of self-discovery, new direction, and fresh beginnings. Today, millions of mid-career men and women are wrestling with middlescence--looking for ways to balance work, family, and leisure while hoping to find new meaning in their jobs. The question is: Will they find it in your organization or elsewhere? Companies are ill-prepared to manage middlescence because it is so pervasive, largely invisible, and culturally uncharted. That neglect is bad for business: Many companies risk losing some of their best people or--even worse--ending up with an army of disaffected people who stay. The best way to engage middlescents is to tap into their hunger for renewal and help them launch into more meaningful roles. Perhaps managers can't grant a promotion to everyone who merits one in today's flat organizations, but you may be able to offer new training, fresh assignments, mentoring opportunities, even sabbaticals or entirely new career paths within your own company. Millions of mid-career men and women would like nothing better than to convert their restlessness into fresh energy. They just need the occasion--and perhaps a little assistance--to unleash and channel all that potential.

Companies have focused so much on downsizing to contain costs that they've largely neglected a looming threat to their competitiveness: a severe shortage of talented workers. The general population is aging and with it, the labor pool. People are living longer, healthier lives, and the birthrate is at a historical low. During the next 15 years, 80% of the native-born workforce growth in North America--and even more in much of western Europe--is going to be in the over-50 age cohort. When these mature workers begin to retire, there won't be nearly enough young people entering the workforce to compensate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a shortfall of 10 million workers in the United States in 2010, and in countries where the birthrate is well below the population replacement level (particularly in western Europe), the shortage will hit sooner, be more severe, and remain chronic. The problem won't just be a lack of bodies. Skills, knowledge, experience, and relationships walk out the door every time somebody retires. This problem is going to become much more acute in the next decade or so, when baby boomers--more than one-quarter of all Americans, amounting to 76 million people--start hitting their mid-60s. Based on the results of their year-long research project, the authors of this article offer recommendations for gaining the loyalty of older workers and creating a more flexible approach to retirement that allows people to continue contributing well into their 60s and 70s.