The Making of the Modern Elder Marketplace

The world is getting greyer. 10,000 people in the US turn 65 years old every day. By 2025, the population aged 65 or above in China may hit 300 million.

The number of Americans aged 50 and above who are working has grown significantly over the past decade, and is expected to keep increasing. In many countries, the seasoned worker is also the fastest-growing part of the workforce.

This demographic shift is the next tsunami in the future of work – large scale, anticipated in the abstract, but a blind spot for most leaders. Companies overlook this resource at their peril. Few companies have given serious thought to reimagining the role of the modern elder for competitive advantage.

In 2015, PwC conducted a survey of global CEOs and found that 64% had a diversity and inclusion strategy, yet of those, only 8% included age as a dimension of their strategy. Fewer than half of companies worldwide factor longevity into their strategic planning.

The advantages of workers aged fifty and over include their experience, professionalism, work ethic, lower turnover, and knowledge. They continue to be the most engaged age cohort across all generations. 65% of employees aged 55+ are considered to be ‘engaged’ based on survey data, while younger employee engagement averages 58% to 60%. The level of employee engagement has implications for both retention and business results. It takes only a 5% increase in engagement to achieve 3% incremental revenue growth.

Perhaps most interesting is data on the cost of senior workers for those who see the benefits, but fear greater costs. Contrary to common perception, workers over 50 do not cost significantly more than younger workers. Shifting trends in reward and benefit programmes have created a more age-neutral distribution of labour costs. The incremental costs of adding talent aged 50 and over results in only minimal increases in total labour costs and may be far outweighed by the value that they add.