We need older workers to stay in the workforce to earn & invest.
Slightly more than half of full-time, full-year U.S. workers 51 to 54 with a long-term employer were forced out of jobs involuntarily and faced long-term unemployment or a severe drop in earnings, a 2018 report by ProPublica found.
There can be a lot of challenges to getting older, but age discrimination is illegal for a reason. Competence issues can affect any worker. If someone is unable to do their job, that’s one thing. But leave age out of it.
The labor participation rates of older groups age 55 and up have been trending higher for the past two decades and are projected to continue doing so, according to an analysis by Bureau of Labor Statistics. This trajectory is partly due to incentives for people to delay claiming Social Security and the decline of employer-provided pensions.
Nearly 40 percent of people 65 to 69 are expected to be in the labor force by 2030, compared with 24.5 percent in 2000. By 2030, the BLS projects, 11.7 percent of the workforce will be people at least 75, more than twice the 5.3 percent recorded 30 years earlier.