CRANBERRY TWP — As Baby Boomers retire, thousands of new workers will be needed to replace them.

This is one of the messages representatives with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development have been sharing with public officials and business leaders in the region.

The Allegheny Conference, an economic and community development organization that covers 10 counties in Western Pennsylvania, in May released a report titled “Inflection Point: Supply, demand and the future of work in the Pittsburgh region.”

The report projects that by 2025, there will be a shortfall of 80,000 workers in the region because of worker retirements, economic growth and occupational transitions.

On Wednesday representatives of the Allegheny Conference had a briefing at Westinghouse Electric for the Butler County commissioners and officials from some municipalities, schools and larger employers.

They have held numerous outreach events in Pittsburgh and in each of the 10 counties they cover, said Bill Flanagan, chief corporate relations officer.

The good news from the report is that in the future there will be plenty of good-paying jobs available for young people.

“This is a level of opportunity we have not been able to promise to people in a generation in a long time,” Flanagan said.

The bad news is that there will be a “war for talent” in which the region will compete with other areas in the United States for workers.

About 22 percent of workers in the region, a total of 290,000, are age 55 and older. The projected shortfall of 80,000 workers over 10 years is because the region has about 29,000 retirements and 5,000 new jobs created each year, while only 26,000 students are graduating from high school each year.

One of the ways companies and communities can address this shortfall is by working to retain college students and employees, according to the report.

This includes providing opportunities for housing and livable communities that have public transportation and desirable amenities.

“This generation is more likely to pick a place over a job. They go to the place and then they look for a job,” Flanagan said. “We need to be competitive as a place, how do we create a perception of ‘this is a great place?’”

The report says that the 61 higher education institutions in the region graduate about 40,000 students per year. Of those, 43 percent of graduates with four-year degrees remain in the region.

“We graduate more engineers than we need, but they leave. We have to shift how we think about labor,” said Linda Topoleski, Allegheny Conference vice president of work force operations and programs.

Topoleski said that there is growing pressure on colleges to give students a good return on investment by preparing them to immediately get hired after finishing their degree. Growing fields include information technology and health care, while the need for teachers is decreasing, she said.

Employers also are reevaluating what they require for entry level positions and how they try to retain employees, she said.

Some officials at the briefing Wednesday agreed that the public and private sectors must make changes to deal with the impending changes and prepare for new opportunities.

County Commissioner Kevin Boozel said he has noticed that many young professionals are waiting until later in life to commit to a job, buy a house and start a family.

Many college graduates look for a job to work for only a couple years before moving on, he said.

“They want to be fluid. They want to be movable. It’s a different way of thinking,” he said.

County Commissioner Kim Geyer said that many young people would prefer to live in a walkable community and take a train or bus to work.

“Young people want public transportation. They want public transit, and they want to be able to work on their technology while they’re riding,” she said.

A recent snapshot of the economy in Butler County provided by the Allegheny Conference showed that there were 464 employers with 1,601 open jobs that would provide a living wage and an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent.

Some of the top jobs available included truck driver, nurse, administrative assistant, physical therapist and software engineer.

Skills in demand in Butler County include quality assurance, export controls, information management, quality control, pediatrics, and instrumentation.

The Allegheny Conference’s report is available on its website, www.alleghenyconference.org.