I’ve been traveling this week and am just now getting deep into my stacked-up e-mail, but USA Today had a story a few days ago about the first baby boomer to apply for Social Security retirement benefits–Kathleen Casey-Kirschling of Earleville, Maryland, “generally recognized as the nation’s first boomer (born in Philadelphia on January 1, 1946, at 12:00:01 a.m.) … [who is] taking early retirement at 62.”

It’s not a bad story, but it follows the doom-and-gloom scenario that you have heard over and over again, and the gist of it is this: “The boomer retirements have demographers, actuaries and economists worried as they prepare for an estimated $50 trillion in future obligations over the next 75 years. Social Security will rise from 4 percent to 6 percent of the nation’s economy. Medicare will go from 3 percent to 11 percent.

‘This,’ says Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation, ‘is the single greatest economic challenge of our era.’ ”

I’m already tired of reading about the baby boomer retirement wave, but be prepared for a flood of these kinds of stories over the next 10 years (or more), because it is a topic that has everyone worrying about the “What if?” scenarios if boomers indeed retire on cue and as expected.There are two big issue here: what to do about the worker shortage that will come with the flood of baby boomers rushing into retirement (the “Talent-Shortage Myth” that I have written about on more than one occasion)and, how the federal government will deal with the financial strain placed on Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs that the boomers will be drawing from.

Mark Larson wrote about this topic for Workforce Management back in May 2006 in an intriguing article titled “Global Views on Retirement”. It’s a good story that takes a much more global view of the issue than the USA Today story does. But, none of this changes my view on any of this. Yes, it’s prudent to prepare for the worst if the baby boomers retire en masse as many expect, but don’t be surprised when many, many boomers decide to do it their own way, as usual, and opt to stay on the job for much longer than expected.