There is a boom in baby boomer joblessness. It has more than doubled, from 3.2 percent to 6.8 percent, since the recession began.

Earlier this week, a CBS Evening News report focused on the plight of unemployed professionals ages 55 and older in the Charlotte, N.C. area. Even the most organized among them — like those who make looking for a job a full-time job — can't find work. One of the people interviewed has a Harvard MBA but no job.

Another, a 56-year-old financial professional, works long days trying to place himself in a new job, with no luck so far. He told reporter Byron Pitts that he has resigned himself to working into his 70s. We hear this all the time, don't we? Forget retirement; you're going to have to keep working until you drop.

Which raises the question: Working for whom, doing what, and for how much?

Companies don't want to hire older workers. They cost more to employ than young folks. They have more health issues, meaning their employers must pay higher premiums for insurance. They can't learn as quickly as they once did. Their remaining work life is short.

Besides, there is the above-mentioned fact that jobs of any kind — much less ones that pay well — are as hard to find these days as that proverbial good man.

A family friend of boomer age just lost her job in the admissions department of a technical school in the Harrisburg, Pa., area. The department was abolished, no longer needed because admissions have dried up.

This friend, a Hopkins grad, is brilliant, has multiple degrees and a vast and varied work experience. She says government subsidies played a large part in making these kinds of schools profitable. They've been cut back.

Word has also gotten out, as word does, that there aren't any jobs available for students who pay dearly to get an associate's degree.

My friend says it's a myth that there is a continuing boom in medical tech jobs. There is a glut of people trained for them.

There is also a problem with the raw material. The people she tested didn't know very much. She mentioned Thomas Jefferson to three of them and got blank stares. They not only had never heard of the man, but they didn't know what the Declaration of Independence was.

A front page story in The New York Times the other day explored how rising labor costs have resulted in companies spending on equipment, not workers. The economy is producing as much now as it did pre-recession, but with 7 million fewer jobs.

It's a pretty simple matter: "… equipment and software prices," the Times reports, "have dipped 2.4 percent since the recovery began, thanks largely to foreign manufacturing. Labor costs, on the other hand, have risen 6.7 percent, according to the Labor Department."

Businesses are responding to incentives and disincentives. Hiring and training workers is more expensive. Machines don't need $150 drug tests and don't require employees to reduce their own productivity to train newcomers.

It is true that there are plenty of jobs for Americans with the right job skills, but there's a dearth of such people. Dow Chemical Co. desperately needs chemical engineers, to cite one example. But they can't find them here in the United States.

The result is that much of the giant firm's R&D is moving offshore to India, which is training engineers at a prolific rate.

Dow CEO Andrew Liveris tells CBS News he can't get enough good workers here. He says there are a million science, technology, math and engineering jobs available in this country right now but only 200,000 graduates available to fill them.

You've probably seen the report this week that American high school students aren't learning much about history or science. Some of that is due to the ridiculous priorities set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act, which demands a distorted emphasis on reading and math while neglecting the rest of what it means to have a well-rounded education.

With persistent joblessness undeniably with us, again I ask, if oldsters are going to have to keep working past retirement age, who is going to employ them?

Ron Smith's column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His email is rsmith@wbal.com.