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Just when everybody is worried that there will be a grey tsunami happening in the world with all the baby boomers reaching retiring age, a new report by California-based job search site Glassdoor, “Job and Hiring Trends for 2020,” indicated that baby boomers will, instead, be the fastest-growing age category in the U.S. and U.K. workforces next year.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), almost 20 percent of Americans over the age of 65 were employed or actively looking for work last year, up from less than 12 percent two decades earlier. (The youngest U.S. baby boomers, born in 1964, turned or will turn 55 this year.) “Labor force participation rate is expected to increase fastest for the oldest segments of the population – most notably people aged 65 to 74 and 75 and older – through 2024,” the BLS said in 2017.
For our nation, renowned Canadian demographer David Foot and author Daniel Stoffman said, in their best-selling book Boom, Bust & Echo, that Canadian boomers were born between 1947 and 1966 (versus U.S. boomers born between 1946 and 1964), making the youngest Canadian boomers two years younger than their U.S. counterparts at 53 this year. According to Catalyst, a global non-profit organization working with some of the world’s most powerful CEOs and leading companies to help build workplaces that work for women, despite the low growth of the working-age population from 2011-2016, Canada has the highest proportion of working-age people of the G7 countries.
Global News reported in May 2017 that the jobs report released by Statistics Canada (StatsCan) in April that year showed that boomers were the winners in Canada’s labour market. Employment among Canadians aged 55 and older swelled by 24,000 in April, mostly in full-time work. These data are the portrait of a thriving boomer population who keeps on working and hanging on to full-time positions. This demographic also enjoys remarkable job stability. A 2013 StatsCan study also indicated that around two-thirds of Canadians in the post-war generation entered their 50s having held down the same job for 12 years or more. “In fact, most had worked for the same firm or organization for far longer – often 20 years or more.”
At the same time, the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) expects Britain’s over-65 workforce to grow by 20 percent in the decade to 2024. In 2016, the ONS predicted England’s over-65 workforce would see an increase of almost 60 percent within 25 years.
CNBC reported that earlier this year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published an article that outlined some of the reasons the global workforce was ageing. “Science is making longer lives possible – and as people live longer, they are continuing to learn, to be productive and to contribute to society. For many people, that means continuing to work,” the WEF said. “Today, a key part of extended middle age is the freedom to work. More and more, people want to keep working past traditional retirement age because they want to continue to contribute to society and find meaning in their own lives – and work does that for them.”
Glassdoor also noted that as the population aged, pensions may not be sufficient to support people throughout their longer lives, giving some no choice but to return to work. The report said that the over 65s are not going anywhere, noting that boomers are healthier than past generations and more in need of retirement income than their predecessors.
However, Glassdoor also flagged that few employers were tapping into the growing baby boomer talent pool, with most recruitment drives focused on tech-savvy millennials. According to Glassdoor’s Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain, “In 2020 and beyond, we expect to see a dramatic shift in recruiting focus, with more strategies aimed at attracting the booming 65+ workforce and using it to companies’ strategic advantage.”
Glassdoor said baby boomers are just as open to improving their job skills as their younger colleagues. Last year, a survey of 570 British HR professionals by the U.K.’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found more than half of employers expected to alter their recruitment and selection policies over the next five years to adapt to the aging workforce.
The job-search site also noted that as boomers continued to work or re-enter the workforce, some challenges would arise for employers, such as tackling ageism. “Although employers around the globe have tackled important issues of gender identity and ethnic diversity in the workplace in recent years, the issue of age bias has gotten much less attention – something we expect to change in 2020 and beyond,” the report said.
CNBC reported that in June, a survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that one in three Americans younger than 50 felt the aging workforce had negative implications for their own careers. However, Glassdoor referenced the findings of a study from Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, which analyzed data from 1977 to 2011 and concluded that there was no evidence younger workers’ opportunities were diminished by older workers remaining in the workforce. In fact, the researchers suggested, the opposite was true.
“That’s an important message for HR teams to communicate to younger workers in the coming decade,” Chamberlain said. “And the best way to prepare both seasoned workers and newer generations in the coming decade is through investments in learning and development.”
For organizations to thrive in the new decade, they should establish workforce management strategies to deal successfully with an older employee demographic. To enhance productivity, profits and long-term success, organizations would also need to be “multi-generationally” inclusive and proactively consider and cater to the needs of older workers.
