In the utility industry, electric companies are scrambling to train college students who can take over as electric line workers when baby boomers retire. In the ground transportation industry, older workers are a fact of life: Many school bus drivers already are retired from other jobs.

		Graphic: Western Pennsylvania's aging work force

Those two industries -- and the four others with aging work forces profiled in a series of reports from the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board and the Carnegie Mellon Center for Economic Development -- show the difficulty of homing in on just one set of problems and solutions related to an aging work force.

Compared with seven similar metropolitan areas, the nine-county Western Pennsylvania region has the highest percentage of workers in the 45-54, 55-64 and 65-plus categories, and the lowest percentage of workers in the 25-34 and 35-44 categories, the two groups found.

In addition to utilities and ground transportation, the industries with the highest percentages of older workers in Western Pennsylvania are air transportation, mining, petroleum and coal products manufacturing, and primary metals manufacturing.

Those industries "are kind of old Pittsburgh," said Ron Painter, chief executive officer of the work force policy agency whose members are appointed by the mayor of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County chief executive.

"They're what built this region, what built the American middle class, but they're not sexy, and not that glamorous. They're easily overlooked because people don't perceive that there's opportunity in these sectors."

In particular, the studies said, the electric utility and mining industries both pay salaries significantly above the regional average, but have or expect to have trouble recruiting younger workers.

The mining industry had the most dramatically skewed work force in terms of age.

About half its workers are in the 45-54 age bracket -- double the regional average. Other industries seem to have less trouble coping with an aging work force.

In the metals manufacturing industry, "large local firms engaged in metal production are not likely to face challenges associated with retiring workers due to the relative ease in which they can replace such workers," the report said. But smaller metals companies might face problems with aging work forces, it added.

Mr. Painter stressed that despite the cause for concern presented by an aging work force, there is a flip side.

"If I'm a parent, if I'm a school counselor, if I'm thinking about what is going on in the region, to say, 'There will be opportunity in the region because of the aging issue is very true,' " he said.