Wellness industry opportunities will arise to support a 65+ workforce, because without productive older employees, economies will fail. The world will wake up: healthspan equals workspan.
The Situation: Yes, Longevity, but Few Babies
We all know that an “age bomb” and fertility freefall isn’t just coming, it’s here. Global life expectancy has grown by seven years since 1997 (to age 73) and is forecast to hit age 77 by 2025. It’s much higher in developed nations, and, according to the UN, people 100 years or older are the fastest-growing age group. But what’s really disrupting demographics is the staggering decline in fertility. Across OECD nations, by 2022 the fertility rate had already fallen to 28% below the 2.1 births per woman required to sustain a stable population. Two-thirds of people worldwide now live in a country below that rate. North America and Europe have the world’s lowest fertility at 1.4 and 1.6 births per woman, respectively. The UN Population Fund, which just sounded its strongest alarm on “the unprecedented decline in fertility rates,” estimates that populations in many major economies will plummet by 20-50% by 2050. This month, it was announced that there were nearly a million more deaths than births in Japan! Experts say that, except for Africa, we’re all likely to “become Japan.”
The future? An old world with few young people, all happening faster than experts predicted. Our trend explores how national economies and companies will not survive the workforce shortages without radically rethinking how to attract, retain, creatively manage, and support older people in the workforce, so more can work productively longer. Many forces are driving people to work longer: real financial needs, their valuable knowledge and expertise, and a 4% GDP increase that countries receive for every year of increased work participation.
Older workers are already providing some economic salvation. Just a few stats: in Europe, 90% of the workforce growth in the last decade (17 million employees) came from workers over 50; in advanced economies and China, older workers are already the main drivers of GDP growth; and while hard to believe, the fastest-growing workforce age group globally is represented by those over 75 (OECD).
But in order to turn the world's increased longevity from a crisis into an opportunity, far more significant changes need to happen fast, at both the company and government policy levels. Yes, more governments will keep raising the retirement age, like Denmark, which will raise it to 70 (the highest in the world) by 2040.
Our trend, however, explores how innovative, age-inclusive employment strategies, policies and workplaces are beginning to emerge, reimagining how older workers could stay on and adapt in an age where the concept of retirement as a hard break is coming undone.
And more experts are now arguing that we will never be able to create a global economy-saving, healthy older workforce without huge policy and corporate shifts towards healthspan and prevention, which will create unprecedented future opportunities for the wellness industry.
In response to the birthrate freefall and aging population crisis, the WEF recently released Futureproofing the Longevity Economy – Innovations and Trends, identifying key ways that governments and companies can build age-inclusive workplaces that could save global economies. The document discusses crucial ways to adopt flexible working models—such as part-time roles, hybrid work or phased retirement—that would retain valuable employees longer and improve access to talent. We need to evolve the mindset around retirement from being a single event to a longer journey, by reducing working hours or moving to a contract basis.
London Business School economics professor Andrew Scott lays out why aging populations should be embraced, not feared. The fact that humanity is living longer, healthier lives is an opportunity. He identifies the vast changes needed, including a focus on preventative health that needs to start in childhood and no later than middle age. Also, he stresses the need to make measures of healthy life expectancy a key metric in allocating health expenditure, rather than measuring output in terms of treating disease and performing operations.
UniCredit’s recent Longevity Economic Forum in Milan was focused on how to rethink lives, meaning, work and financial concepts in an aging world. Experts spoke on how traditional assumptions about retirement, careers, and consumer behavior are no longer viable, yet few governmental, financial, or business institutions have adapted. Three unavoidable actions: 1) working longer (with many countries upping retirement ages), 2) bringing more women of all ages into the workforce and creating policies like shared parental leave, and 3) welcoming migration: increase (legal) immigration and encourage their employment. An expert from Stanford Longevity Center argues we need a culture shift from retirement to “re-inspirement”—a reinvention of purpose, vitality, and contribution in the bonus decades more people are now given.
The report offers statistics and charts on the implications of how our aging world combined with plummeting fertility rates will impact everything, from consumer spending trends to the workforce. It explores how the presence of healthy older people in the workforce benefits everyone. And it identifies policy and employer strategies such as intergenerational mentorship programs, upskilling older workers with digital literacy training, taking a hard line on age-neutral hiring, and getting creative with flexible schedules. The study spotlights companies taking action, such as ANZ, the Australia and New Zealand bank, working on diverse fronts to create a workplace culture where “age is no barrier,” thanks to multiple career extension options, the elimination of qualifications-based career advancement, and age-inclusive recruitment ads.
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