The United States is in the midst of a demographic transformation. Birth rates have decreased and life expectancy has reached an all-time high of 78.5 years.21 Together these trends have led
to a steady increase in the mean and median ages of the American population, with far-reaching consequences for the composition of the labor force. In 2000, workers 55 and over made up only 13.1 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force. By 2010, that percentage had increased to 19.5%. The aging of the workforce is expected to continue. By 2020, it is estimated that workers 55 and over will make up 25 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force.22
While simple demographic factors alone cause a “graying” of the workforce, another factor accentuates the trend: individuals are tending to remain in the workforce longer and to retire later.23, 24 The number of workers in the oldest age category—65 and over—is expected to
increase by more than 80 percent between 2006 and 2016.25 By 2020, it is projected that workers
65 and over will make up more than 7 percent of the total labor force.26
20 Kogan, Deborah, Deanna Khemani, Tyler Moazed, and Michelle Derr, Evaluation of the Aging Worker
Initiative: Interim Report, Social Policy Research Associates and Mathematica Policy Research, August 2012.
21 National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009, downloaded from
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm on August 20, 2012.
22 Toossi, Mitra, “Employment Outlook: 2010–2020,” in Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Department of Labor,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2012.
23 Gendell, Murray, “Older workers: Increasing their labor force participation and hours of work.” Monthly Labor
Review, 131(1):41–54, January 2008.
24 National Institute on Aging, Growing Older in America: The Health and Retirement Study. Bethesda, MD:
National Institute on Aging, 2007.
25 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “BLS Spotlight on Statistics: Older Workers,” July 2008. 26 Toossi, Mitra, “Employment Outlook: 2010–2020,” in Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Department of Labor,
Though the reasons for the increasing tendency to delay retirement are not completely understood, older workers today are on average healthier and more educated than those in previous generations, and both factors lead to higher labor force participation by those over the traditional retirement age of 65. The recent recession only compounded this trend to remain in the workforce for additional years. Layoffs of spouses, declines in the value of retirement accounts, and reduced pension benefits have forced many older workers to postpone retirement in order to provide for themselves and their families.27, 28 In a survey of American workers,
researchers at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University found that three-quarters of the respondents expect that they will be involved in full- or part-time work in their 60s and 70s, either out of financial necessity or out of a desire to continue
working.29
These statistics and projections make it clear that older workers are becoming a larger share of the U.S. workforce. At the same time, however, individual older workers are also facing
increasingly difficult challenges when they lose their jobs. Historically, older workers as a group have had lower rates of unemployment than younger workers, and have been perceived as
needing less assistance with reemployment than other groups. However, because the
manufacturing workforce, in particular, is graying faster than the workforce as a whole,30 many
older workers have been particularly vulnerable to job dislocations over the last decade, as rapid economic globalization has eliminated millions of jobs in manufacturing and other traditional fields of employment.31 Older workers are also becoming a growing share of the long-term and
very long-term unemployed, a trend that started before the recent recession and has steadily advanced. In 2007, about 24 percent of older jobless workers (those age 50 and up) had been out of work for six months or more, and no other age group had as high a rate of long-term
unemployment. In 2011, the proportion of older jobless workers out of work for six months or
27 Employee Benefit Research Institute, “The Impact of the Recent Financial Crisis on 401(k) Account Balances,”
Washington, DC: Employee Benefit Research Institute, Issue Brief No. 326, February 2009.
28 Garr, Emily, “Older Americans in the Recession: More are staying in the workforce, more are losing their jobs.”
Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief No. 251, February 4, 2009.
29 Reynolds, Scott, Neil Ridley, and Carl Van Horn, “A Work-Filled Retirement: Workers’ Changing Views on
Employment and Leisure,” John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, Rutgers University, 2005.
30 The average age of the U.S. manufacturing work is 50 years, according to Scott Doron, Director of the Southern
Technology Council in “Manufacturing: The Misunderstood Industry,” Southern Growth Policies Board, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, August 2010, downloaded from
http://www.southerngrowth.com/communityresources/downloads/manufacturing.pdf on 9/1/2012.
31 Van Horn, Carl E., Kathy Krepcio, and Neil Ridley, “Public and Private Strategies for Assisting Older Workers,”
In Older and Out of Work: Jobs and Social Insurance for a Changing Economy, pp. 205–224, Randall W. Eberts and Richard A. Hobbie, eds., Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2008.
more had jumped to about 54 percent.32 Moreover, in 2011, older jobless workers were more
likely than jobless workers in other age groups to be unemployed for one year or longer.33
One reason for this phenomenon is that older workers often face discrimination in the workplace due to negative stereotypes.34, 35 Although older workers, by any objective measure, are a vital
component of the American workforce, many employers (and others who make hiring decisions) perceive aging workers as having impaired physical and cognitive abilities and lacking in
technological acumen. Furthermore, observing that older workers often expect higher wages than younger workers because of their seniority and expertise, some employers believe that hiring older workers will negatively affect their profit margins.
The public workforce investment system has a mixed record of accomplishment to date in serving older workers. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) adult and dislocated worker programs have been increasing their enrollment of workers 55 or older, measured as a percentage of all WIA enrollees over time. However, the entered-employment rates for older workers, according to one recent study, have been declining over time.36 Furthermore, an earlier study
suggested that older workers are less likely than other WIA enrollees to receive training services.37 During the site visits for this study, the respondents interviewed for this study also
shared their impression that older workers were less comfortable than other customers using the online tools available for self-service delivery of labor market information and job search assistance in many American Job Centers.
32 McKenna, Claire, “Economy in Focus: Long Road Ahead for Older Unemployed Workers,” National
Employment Law Project, March 9, 2012.
33 Ibid.
34 Bendick, Marc Jr., Charles W. Jackson, and J. Horatio Romero, “Employment Discrimination Against Older
Workers” Journal of Aging and Social Policy Vol. 8, No. 4, 1997, pp 25–46.
35 Gregory, Raymond F, Age Discrimination in the American Workplace: Old at a Young Age” Rutgers University
Press, 2001.
36 Zhang, Ting, “Workforce Investment Act Training for Older Workers: Towards a Better Understanding of Older
Worker Needs during the Economic Recovery,” 2009, pp. 4, 5.
http://wdr.doleta.gov/research/FullText_Documents/ETAOP_2011-10.pdf
37 David W. Stevens, “Older Worker Flows Through Core, Intensive, and Training Services, and Employment