The end of the "working age"

Last week in Harvard Business Review , Ken Dychtwald , Bob Morison , and Katy Flick Terveer outlined their position for "redefining retirement," noting that "today’s workforce and workplace are in unprecedented flux." They're right. Our century-long prerogative that the working age should be 16-64 is dying.

Thanks to a hot economy and decades of demographic change, including declining birthrates and increased longevity, the U.S. labor market is the tightest it has been in decades. This shift has prompted everything from the Great Resignation to the Great Retirement to the Great Negotiation .

The authors highlight the impressive growth of older workers and the decline of younger workers in the labor market in the coming years—statistics every employer should pay attention to if it wants to maintain its competitive advantage. Workers over 65 will grow by over a third in the coming decade, and those over 75 will nearly double. Those under 24 will contract by about a tenth.

While older workers are an essential part of the modern workforce, the article fails to consider other labor pools that businesses are already leveraging to fill the gap, including immigrant, overseas, and child workers. Recent investigative reporting from 纽约时报 and others have found that immigrant children—some as young as 13—have been employed illegally in America's meatpacking industry.

So what does this all mean? In short, we've entered a whole new era of work. As population growth slows or reverses in over 90 economies, businesses will have no choice but to leverage all available (and legal) talent to compete. We are quickly reverting to the historical norm of individuals working from when they are able to when they are not.

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It’s time for a new deal between employers and older workers.

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With the population aging, continuing to focus society on younger people no longer makes sense. It's not about replacing, but about adding, seeing those over 60 for what they are: valid people capable of working, buying, consuming and enjoying life for at least another two or three decades. With gains for health, social security and the economy.

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