If you’ve noticed a bit more gray hair on the heads of employees in retail and elsewhere, that is evidence of a widespread trend in today’s workforce. Indeed, according to a new research report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the prime working age population (25–64 years old) has significantly fallen and is being filled by older workers. At the same time, the labor force participation rate of those ages 65 or older has not reached its pre-pandemic level, while that of the prime working-age population has.
“Despite the difference in labor-force participation (LFP) rates between 1975 and 2023 being less than 2 percentage points, significant changes in labor force patterns and composition have occurred over the past several decades,” said Craig Copeland, EBRI’s Director, Wealth Benefits Research.
Some of those changes include:
- LFP rates decreased for men and increased for women over this timespan, though female LFP rates have trended down since the 1990s, resulting in a lower overall LFP in recent years.
- A large decline in the LFP rate was observed among those ages 16–19 at the beginning of the 2000s, while those ages 65 and over have had an increase in the LFP rate.
“The age of the labor force will play an important role in companies’ work force development,” Copeland said. “At present, the aging of the baby boom generation has resulted in an increased share of older individuals in the labor force. However, members of this generation are almost all at least in their 60s, and the next generation, Gen X, is much smaller. So, a decrease in the share of workers ages 55 or older is imminent. How quickly this outcome results will be determined by whether the baby boom generation has continual higher labor force participation rates at ages over 65 than what has occurred in the past.”
Click here for more from the EBRI study.
