A global context unprecedented in human history

Globally, the population aged 65 and over is growing faster than other age groups. According to the forecasts of the United Nations Report published in July 2019 on the State of World Population, by 2050, one in six people in the world will be over 65 years old (16%), compared to one in eleven in 2019 (9%).

In 2018, for the first time in human history, people aged 65 and older outnumbered children under five worldwide.

By 2050, one in four people living in Europe and North America will be 65 or older. The number of people aged 80 and over is expected to triple from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million.

Rising life expectancy and declining fertility rates are, first of all, the main factors influencing our demographics. But migration, movements at the global level also have important effects on the age structure of the population:

• In host countries, international migration can temporarily slow the decline and ageing of the population, since migrants tend to be young and working-age.
• The flip side of this situation is that these large migrations of young workers could ultimately contribute to accentuating the ageing of the population of the countries of origin, even if for the moment birth levels generally counterbalance this phenomenon.

Other causes, by systemic effect, can also influence this phenomenon: the increase in recent years, in many countries, including high-income countries, of often precarious jobs, low wage expectations and an insecure labour market, can also lead families to have fewer children or to have more children later in life. One of the immediate consequences of this slowdown is that the growth of the global labour force, as experts say, may not

Seniors, asset or burden? Prejudice in the world of work…

According to the barometer conducted in France by the Defender of Rights and the ILO, 1age is, along with being a pregnant woman, the first criterion of discrimination felt by employees. Being over 55 years of age is considered a barrier to hiring by 82% of public sector employees, 81% of private sector employees and 89% of jobseekers. Age is a vector of many prejudices, both on the part of employers and workers themselves.

According to the 2018 barometer of a French association of recruiters “A compétences égales”, companies, recruitment agencies and senior candidates cite as the main “perceived” obstacles to hiring seniors: cost, difficulty in being managed, resistance to change, oversizing of the profile in relation to the position, or the question of the time remaining to work in the company.2

Most of these statements are nevertheless contradicted, according to the same study, by the answers of the seniors interviewed. Thus, 3 out of 4 seniors say they are ready to review their remuneration downwards (and even 8 out of 10 for executives), while more than 9 out of 10 people say they are ready to change functions.

In addition, the advantages of seniors expressed jointly by companies,

Intergenerational diversity : a source of value creation for the company

This aging of the population has another effect for companies and their leaders who must now learn to deal with a new fact: to make three and soon four generations work together with differences in culture and in conception of the relationship to work that can generate as much synergy as tension.

The so-called “Baby Boomer” generation, the generation born between 1945 and 1965, is mainly composed of people who have been able to build their career on commitment to a growing post-war global economy, the valorization of experience and social achievements.

Then, the “X” generation, born between 1965 and 1980, experienced successive crises (oil shocks, fall of the Berlin Wall,..) and the appearance of mass unemployment. They learned ,at their own expense, flexibility and precarity , and in return a driving need to search for stability and security.

The “Y” generation, born between 1980 and 1995, now represents 50% of the world’s population and, according to several studies (Deloitte, Brookings Institute), it will represent 75% of the world’s workforce in 2025.

This generation, which grew up with ICTs, is “saturated” with the effects of the immediacy of the digital world. They also learned from the experience of the previous generation, the disillusionment and accidents

Seniors in early retirement : A reserve of skills?

The OECD, in its 2006 report “Living and Working Longer” already noted that less than 60% of people aged 50 to 64 were employed, a situation that already reflected early retirements. In some countries, early retirement is mainly based on certain provisions of pension systems or early retirement schemes, in others it is carried out through disability and other social benefits.

In all countries surveyed returns to work are rarer among older people – in general, less than 5% of inactive people aged 50 to 64 are employed one year after becoming unemployed.

For several decades, we have observed that seniors have as much difficulty keeping their job as finding one in the event of job loss.

As we have already discussed in the previous chapter, the obstacles to the resumption of employment, expressed on the side of employers, include:

a negative perception of the ability of older people to adapt to technological and organizational changes;

labour costs, both wage and non-wage, which increase more with age than with productivity;

and the difficulties that companies may encounter in adjusting their workforce, taking into account employment protection rules.

Older people themselves may feel (justified or not) that their human capital is depreciated, for example due to the effects of ageing on adapting to the demands and working conditions of certain jobs. But there is also the question of maintaining or developing their skills, often with little motivation on their part to mobilize the training opportunities available to them.

In fact, despite efforts with incentive policies, as in Europe with “Lifelong Learning”, the frequency of training decreases with age in all the countries covered by the study. This disinvestment is partly explained by the fact that the payback period of senior education is often considered too short, but also by comparatively lower levels of education, on average in these age groups and therefore less inclination to train.

Health problems and harsh working conditions may also play a role: many studies show that manual and low-skilled workers

The promises of the “Silver Economy” …

Under the label “seniors” hides in reality a great diversity of profiles from young active and autonomous retirees to dependent older people. Each of these profiles is a growing target that has specific needs, which innovations, adapted products and services will have to meet in the near future; It is this emerging sector that is termed the “silver economy”.

According to GlobalAgingCOnsulting4 there are three main groups of target individuals for products and services in the “silver economy”:

• so-called “active”, autonomous and independent seniors;
• so-called “fragile” seniors, with some limitations or decreases in capacity;
• so-called “dependent” seniors, who need help to perform everyday acts.

One of the main arguments of the “silver economy” is to improve the quality of life of all these people, whatever their profile,

Economic crises and ageing: Impact on pension systems and risks of impoverishment

The income received by pensioners is mainly the result of their individual professional and salary background and the rules in force at the time when pension rights were accumulated.

In addition to the different characteristics of social protection systems, the rate of paid activity of men and women, their wages and the length of their working lives are fundamental determinants of their retirement income.

Unlike previous generations, many of today’s employees have been or are facing increasing job insecurity as well as the need for professional transitions and retraining that is often experienced.

The employment relationship has gradually evolved towards more flexible, but often more precarious, schemes, such as part-time work, fixed-term contracts, and various forms of self-employment that have developed in particular with the digitalization of the economy.

The various economic crises and structural deficiencies in the education-employment relationship have regularly led to delayed and often difficult entries into the labour market. The integration or reintegration support programs planned by governments have not always taken into account the issue of pension contributions.

Furthermore, subsequent life events (e.g. motherhood and child-rearing) affect the amount of pensions, depending on the pension scheme, as a result of the potential length of periods of paid employment. Women’s often fragmented career paths and persistent pay gaps are also factors affecting the amount of pensions. According to a 2015 OECD study, gender disparity is particularly pronounced when it comes to family responsibilities: a quarter of women, but barely 4% of men left their jobs to care for a loved one (2015 data).

An example illustrates the risks of this generational disparity in employment: Between 1990 and 2000, following the burst of

For more information

• OECD studies and data

Aging and employment policies

Table of good practices (OECD – Download)

• UN reports and data

The 2022 Revision of World Population Prospects

THEMATIC QUESTIONS Seniors

Illustrated practices:

France : Pôle emploi promotes job sharing for seniors

https://www.pole-emploi.fr/actualites/a-laffiche/seniors-boostez-votre-employabil.html

In France, work-sharing companies (WSC) can be created with the sole purpose of providing client companies with qualified personnel that they cannot recruit themselves due to their size or resources. The employee’s mission can be full or part-time. A contract must be signed, for each assignment, between the timeshare company and the client company, and an employment contract must be signed between the employee made available and the timeshare company. Temporary work companies can also carry out the activity of timeshare company.

The use of timeshare initially concerned only a small part of the working population, until the French law on the professional future of 2018, extended this device to a larger number of profiles. Now, people can be hired on a timeshare basis who:

• Who have particular difficulties in finding employment
• Who have been registered as unemployed for at least six months
• Who are recipients of minimum social benefits
• Who are disabled or over 50 years old
• Who have a low level of qualification