With baby boomers on the cusp of retirement and fewer math and science graduates opting for aerospace careers, many companies are in a race to hang on to their young talent. The problem is that younger workers do not feel as attached to their jobs as earlier generations did.

The voluntary attrition rate for aerospace and defense (A&D) employees with five or fewer years' experience was almost 16% last year, according to AVIATION WEEK's 2009 Workforce Study. That is well above the average attrition rate of less than 10%. A&D employers have been hard-pressed to compete with the lure of Silicon Valley's free-wheeling innovation or, until recently, Wall Street's riches. A weak economy and last year's meltdown of the financial industry have eased the pressure for now, but human resources executives already are worrying about how they will retain talent once the economy recovers.

As more baby boomers move into retirement age, aerospace companies are focusing on the next large demographic bulge, the "Millennials" who are now in their 20s. But Millennials and the thirty-something "Generation X" that preceded them do not regard aerospace careers as highly as their elders did.

"In the 1950s and '60s, a career in aerospace was, for lack of a better word, glamorous," says retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, who began his career as an aerospace engineer in 1958, the year after the Russians kicked off the space race by orbiting the Sputnik satellite. "Today the image of engineering is not very good."

Compounding the problem is that A&D companies are competing for a shrinking pool of technical talent. High school students in the U.S. rank "pretty close to the bottom of the barrel" in math and science, says Aerospace Industries Assn. President and CEO Marion Blakey, who calls the problem a national crisis.

"The median age in our industry is 45," Blakey says. "The industry needs to focus on how the expectations of the youngest part of the workforce will mesh with a career in aerospace."

Hamilton Sundstrand has found that if it can keep an employee for at least five years, he or she is less likely to leave. "We have a specific focus on making sure that the onboarding and career developing is particularly heavy at that point," says Tatsuo (Tutch) Shirane, vice president for human resources and communications.

Human resources veterans say the first step in retaining employees is identifying what is important to them. This can range from the mundane -- reconfiguring office space to include more social areas and offering onsite dry cleaning -- to the more intangible, such as identifying work as serving a larger purpose than the self.

"Hierarchy is not part of the culture of this generation," says Dianna Peterson, Boeing Co.'s director of strategic workforce planning. "We're bringing the awareness to our leaders that different generations have different expectations," she says.

Boeing recognizes the need for the under-40 cohort to have direct and faster access to senior management and to work on critical projects. The company's Reach social networking and community development program connects 5,000 Boeing employees with senior management through electronic media, face-to-face meetings and mentoring.