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Companies are scrambling to hire, older workers continue to retire. In the US, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell laments the 3.5 million people missing from the workforce compared to pre-pandemic trends, many of them over 50. In the UK, a House of Lords report entitled ‘Where Have All the Workers Gone?’ bemoans the more than half a million newly inactive people in the country, a majority due to early retirement. Why they left is hotly debated, but what will it will take to entice them back to work? First, a better understanding of people in their 3rd Quarters – the increasingly active 25 years after 50. And secondly, a shift in corporate cultures and practices. What the gender shift was to the past two decades, the age shift will be to the next two.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to get Britain’s 50+ population to resist early retirement and shore up the post-pandemic economy by returning to work. He is planning to offer them a Midlife MOT (British for an annual car check up), a programme first launched by insurance company AVIVA. It invites people to think and plan for the second half of lengthening lives. (Full disclosure, I run a similar programme myself, have just returned from Harvard’s year-long version of the same, the Advanced Leadership Initiative, and am researching other Midlife Transition programmes around the world).
Will getting people to think more deeply about their wealth, worth and life’s work stimulate them back into paid employment? In the UK, 60% of those who left their jobs since 2020 consider returning. Most are professionals over age 50 who have taken early retirement. They are a crucial and highly experienced part of the national labour force. Getting individuals to rethink work and engagement in an age of longevity (as well as costs in an age of inflation) is both urgent and essential.
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