A couple of years ago, speaking in Lansing to the Administrative Officers Association in Michigan, my host asked the assembled crowd of a hundred or more state executives how many planned to retire within the next five years. A sea of hands went up. I was stunned.

Last year, California’s state government took a hard look at its workforce projections and was dismayed at what it found: More than half of the state’s 208,000 workers will be eligible for retirement within the decade, including 3,400 top executives and managers. Nothing was being done to prepare for it.

There is a quiet crisis brewing in the public sector — from the federal level to the states, and down to the cities and counties. We are running out of workers in general and middle and upper-level managers in particular. It’s not a problem confined to government, for sure, but it’s more acute there than in the private sector.

More than half the 22 million or so government workers from the federal to the local levels are 45 or older, compared with slightly more than 30 percent in the private sector. In more than half of the states, one in five employees will be eligible to retire in the next five years.

The paradox is that during this coming period, the demand for government services is likely to grow as the population ages.

When you look at public employment trends, ironically, it’s clear that the problem may be most acute in the more conservative regions of the country.

Despite very tough times fiscally since 2001, state employment managed to grow during that period by 3.7 percent, to 5,169,000 employees. Fifteen of the top 25 states in employment growth were carried by President Bush in 2004.

Local employment in the same period increased by 6 percent, to 14,439,000 employees. Bush carried nine of the top 10 states in local employee growth in winning his second term, and 18 of the top 25. Meanwhile, the federal workforce actually contracted (1.8 percent), which it has been doing for more than a decade. Including 770,000 postal workers, there are now 2.7 million federal civilian employees.

So there are more than 22 million public sector civilian workers in the country: 12 percent are at the federal level, 23 percent at the state level, and the remaining 65 percent at the local level. That means nearly two-thirds of all public employees work at the city or county level, where it’s all about direct delivery of services. Already, there are acute shortages of police, health care workers and teachers.

Why are the red states increasing public employment faster? Because that’s where the people and the economic growth are. Of the top 25 states in economic growth, only three — California, Hawaii and Oregon — were Kerry “blue” two years ago.

In years past, most governments had a large talent pool to choose from, with middle-management ranks full of aspiring candidates to replace retiring senior executives. That is no longer the case. During the fiscal hard times early in this decade, many governments made the problem worse by offering early retirement plans to middle and upper-level managers to save short-term money.

Surprisingly, half of government jobs nationwide are in occupations requiring specialized training, education or jobs skills, compared with about 30 percent in the private sector.

So what should we do? Many experts are advising states and localities to adopt a more integrated system to build “leadership pipelines” that involve greater efforts to recruit, train, retain and promote high performers. Rigid personnel policies will need to become more flexible, in tune with the changing culture of work in the private and nonprofit sectors.

At the federal level, much of the administrative burden has been passed down to the states or contracted out to the private and for-profit sectors — one reason federal employment has been falling.

States and many localities now are seeing the same syndrome. Ambitious privatization and outsourcing plans are being executed or considered across the country. But privatization can be tricky. Texas and Florida have experienced significant problems in their efforts to outsource social services functions. The federal government has been rocked by front-page procurement scandals at the highest levels.

When there are trustworthy people on staff who know how to plan for it, how to write the contracts and administer them, privatization can work. But we don’t have enough of those kinds of people today, so how will we attract them five or 10 years from now?

The good news is that we finally are waking up to the problem. Organizations tend to change eventually when it’s in their interest. Not everyone will want to retire, and even if they do, they might like to come back as consultants, where they have more flexibility and even have the opportunity to make more money. And there are lots of examples of people who have had successful careers in the private sector who want to devote some time to taking on the challenges in government. Look at Michael Bloomberg.

So it’s hardly hopeless. But we had better get on with it.

Peter Harkness is the editor and publisher of Governing magazine, published by Congressional Quarterly Inc.