1A. Labor force participation rate of older Americans, by gender and age, 1982–2022

1B. Labor force participation rate of older Americans, by race and ethnicity, gender, and age, 2022

1C. Share of older workers in physically demanding jobs, by educational attainment and age, 2018

1D. Share of older workers in physically demanding jobs, by race and ethnicity, gender, and age, 2018

1E. Share of workers represented by a union, by age, 1983–2021

1F. Share of retired older workers who retired involuntarily, by union representation and age (2014–2018 pooled data)

1G. Share of retired older workers who retired involuntarily, by educational attainment and age (2014–2018 pooled data)

1H. Share of retired older workers who retired involuntarily, by gender and age (2014–2018 pooled data)

1I. Share of retired older workers who retired involuntarily, by race, ethnicity, and age (2014–2018 pooled data)

1J. Workers’ average self-assessed probability of not getting rehired at the same level if they lost their job, by age, 2002–2018

1K. Workers’ average self-assessed probability of not getting rehired at the same level if they lost their job, by gender and age, 2018

While anti-worker policies and adverse labor market conditions also harm younger workers, older workers face special challenges linked to age discrimination, obsolete or employer-specific skills, poor health, and other barriers to obtaining and keeping good jobs. Older workers who lose their jobs suffer greater earnings losses than their younger counterparts. Their options for reentering the workplace are often constrained by health limitations and caregiving responsibilities; by family, housing, and community ties to areas with aging populations and declining industries; by employers leery of offering lower-paying jobs to “overqualified” workers with nontransferable skills; and by other barriers to reemployment (Berkman and Truesdale 2022; Farmand and Ghilarducci 2019).

For these reasons, older workers are disproportionately represented among the long-term unemployed and among “discouraged” workers who are not prepared for retirement but have given up looking for work (Johnson and Butrica 2012; Johnson and Gosselin 2018; Weller 2020; Townsend Kiernan and Miller 2021; Maestas and Li 2006). Displaced older workers who do find work often do so only after enduring long searches and accepting significant pay cuts (Farber 2017; Koenig, Trawinski, and Rix 2015).

The same factors that affect older workers’ reemployment prospects if they lose their jobs also affect their ability to negotiate better pay and working conditions at their current jobs. These and other factors may be driving down older workers’ wages relative to those of prime-age workers, though patterns differ by gender and educational attainment. One factor that has weakened older workers’ bargaining power is declining retirement security, which, combined with poor external job prospects, leaves many workers stuck in bad jobs (Farmand and Ghilarducci 2019).

More research is needed on how age interacts with gender, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, and other factors that have been shown to influence workers’ bargaining power (Naidu and Carr 2022; Farmand and Ghilarducci 2022). It is likely that older age exacerbates the labor market disadvantages faced by Blacks, Hispanics, and women, though age may have a less negative effect among more privileged groups. Bahn (2020), for example, lists reasons why older women may have weak bargaining power, including age discrimination, having caregiving responsibilities, being secondary earners whose mobility is constrained by a spouse’s job, and being employed in such occupations as nursing and teaching where large employers often face little competition in hiring.

What do the charts tell us?

Despite challenges, more Americans age 65 and older are working or actively looking for work than before 2000. Older men have higher labor force participation rates than older women, but the gender gap has narrowed, especially in the 55–64 age group (Chart 1A). Among older workers, labor force participation rates are highest for Hispanic and Asian American men (Chart 1B).

Though there has been a societal shift toward sedentary occupations, many older workers—and especially those without college degrees—work in physically demanding jobs (Chart 1C). Black and Hispanic older workers are more likely to have such jobs than their white non-Hispanic counterparts (Chart 1D).

The share of workers ages 55–64 represented by a union has declined, weakening older workers’ bargaining power and eroding workplace protections (Chart 1E). Union members are more likely to have good pensions, job security, and other advantages that reduce the likelihood of leaving the workforce sooner than planned (Chart 1F). But since most workers do not have these protections, unplanned retirement because of poor health, job loss, or deteriorating working conditions is common among both men and women, especially among workers without college degrees who retire before age 65 (Charts 1G and 1H). Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to retire involuntarily—including a majority of Black workers who retire at age 65 or older but had hoped to work longer (Chart 1I).

Tight labor markets, like union representation, increase workers’ ability to negotiate better pay and working conditions. Older workers’ job market insecurity peaked during the Great Recession of 2008–2009, but these workers regained some confidence as the economy recovered (Chart 1J). Older women are more pessimistic about their job prospects than older men (Chart 1K), with discrimination against older women job applicants a likely factor (Lahey 2008; Neumark, Burn, and Button 2019).

What can we do to alleviate challenges faced by older workers?

Older workers can be helped by policies that level the playing field with younger workers. A growing body of research finds that many employers discriminate against older applicants (e.g., Lahey 2008; Farber et al. 2019; Neumark, Burn, and Button 2019; Neumark et al. 2019). Policymakers should strengthen protections for older workers, who, under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), face a stricter burden of proof than plaintiffs in other employment discrimination cases (Harrison 2021; Olen 2019; McLaughlin 2019). The ADEA is further weakened by the growing practice of employers requiring workers to agree to arbitration to resolve disputes rather than allowing them to pursue claims in court (Colvin 2018; Harris 2020). In addition to tightening legislative language and ending forced arbitration, regulators should identify and prevent discriminatory practices, such as writing job descriptions with ageist language (Burn et al. 2022). An Older Workers Bureau at the Department of Labor could help identify problem areas, support research, and work with employers and other stakeholders to make the workforce a more welcoming place for older workers (Ghilarducci 2021; Risher 2022).

Employers who stereotype older workers are hindered from hiring the best person for the job to the detriment of both employers and workers. But discrimination might be rationalized as a way for employers to avoid the higher health care or other costs associated with employing older workers. Expanding Medicare eligibility to more older workers—or to everyone—and making it the primary payer would be one way to make sure health care costs are not a disincentive to employing older workers (Clark and Shoven 2019).

Another targeted policy that would help older workers is expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Few older workers are helped by the EITC, which focuses on working parents and provides only small benefits to workers between the ages of 25 and 64 who are not custodial parents (Schvedov and Schramm 2020). The American Rescue Plan of 2021 temporarily expanded EITC eligibility and benefits to low-income workers over the age of 18 without dependent children at home, but Congress let these provisions expire (Dolby 2021; Rahman-Davies 2022). Permanently increasing benefits and expanding eligibility to all low-wage workers would boost labor force participation and help struggling Americans at both ends of the age spectrum.

Older workers also face barriers to accessing career counseling and job training programs. With a few exceptions, such as the Senior Community Service Employment Program (NCOA 2022) and the New Start Career Network (Heidkamp et al. 2022), these programs often focus on younger workers because unemployed older workers are more likely to find part-time or lower-paid jobs or to want the flexibility of self-employment, which affects how the programs are evaluated (Abraham and Houseman 2020). Adding staff, programs, and performance metrics better suited to older workers’ needs could help fill the lacuna in job training programs and counseling oriented toward older workers.

While leveling the playing field is important, targeted policies can have limited impacts, while policies that improve working conditions for all workers can have the greatest impact on more vulnerable workers, including older workers. A priority is pursuing full-employment fiscal and monetary policies, since tight labor markets make employers work harder to recruit, hire, and retain older workers and other workers who are often discriminated against or overlooked. Older workers’ gains in the strong pre-COVID-19 economy were halted by the pandemic, though their plight would have been much worse had policymakers not responded swiftly to replace lost income and boost the economy (CBPP 2022a, 2022c).

Expanding the economic pie through broad-based policies from which all workers benefit is important, but so is ensuring that workers fully share in it. Central to achieving this goal is protecting workers’ right to collectively bargain for better wages, working conditions, and job protections. Because unions and union members prioritize retirement benefits in bargaining, 85% of union members participate in a retirement plan, including 68% who participate in secure defined benefit pensions. In contrast, only 51% of nonunion workers participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan of any kind and only 13% participate in a defined benefit pension (BLS 2022a). Access to secure retirement benefits gives older workers the freedom to walk away from bad jobs, reinforcing their bargaining power (Farmand and Ghilarducci 2019).

Beyond the direct effects of union representation on members’ well-being, unions have important spillover effects, raising pay and labor standards for nonunion workers and supporting pro-worker policies (Bivens et al. 2017; Feigenbaum, Hertel-Fernandez, and Williamson 2019). By amplifying worker voices, unions also have positive impacts on the broader society. For example, the presence of unionized nurses was associated with a lower number of nursing home deaths in New York State during the COVID-19 pandemic (Dean et al. 2022).

Union-backed policies that benefit workers of all ages include paid leave, expanded caregiving assistance, flexible and fair scheduling, improved health and safety protections, and unemployment insurance reform (e.g., AFL-CIO 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Olen 2021; Quinnell 2014). These policies especially help older workers, who are more likely than younger cohorts to have health conditions that require extended leave (Smalligan and Boyens 2020), to be caring for frail adult family members (AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving 2020; Butrica and Karamcheva 2018), to face elevated health and safety risks (Smith and Pegula 2020; CDC 2022; Shah Goda and Soltas 2022), or to experience long-term unemployment (Johnson and Butrica 2012; Townsend Kiernan and Miller 2021).

Some policies would not disproportionately help older workers but would have a significant positive effect on the most vulnerable. A long-overdue increase in the minimum wage would help more workers ages 55 and older (4.7 million) than teens (3.3 million). If workers earning close to the minimum who would also get a raise are included in the calculations, 14.6% of older workers would be helped by increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 in 2025 (Cooper, Mokhiber, and Zipperer 2019).

A key issue for older workers is control over when and how much they work. Though older workers have somewhat more predictable schedules than younger workers, the erratic schedules common in the service sector are associated with psychological distress, poor sleep, work-family conflict, and economic insecurity among older workers (Abrams, Harknett, and Schneider 2022). In response to a 2015 survey, 37.7% of workers ages 50 and older cited the right number of hours as an essential or very important attribute that their job lacked, with 25.4% of respondents currently working more hours and 12.3% working fewer hours than desired. This hours mismatch was the most common source of dissatisfaction reported, ranking above concerns about pay, benefits, and other job attributes (Maestas et al. 2017).

A desire for fewer hours leads many older workers to take part-time jobs that do not offer retirement and other benefits. The SECURE Act of 2019 took a small step in the right direction by requiring some employers to extend eligibility for 401(k) plans to some long-term part-time workers (Barney 2020). However, much more could be done to improve the pay and benefits of part-time workers (Golden 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the challenges facing older workers. Temporary measures enacted during the pandemic alleviated some of these challenges and contributed to a rapid economic recovery. But many problems remained unaddressed, including critical health and safety issues. Even as the virus spread rapidly among workers in nursing homes, meatpacking plants, and other workplaces, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration failed to implement an infectious disease standard (Michaels and Wagner 2020; Schwing 2020). Emergency paid leave provisions for workers needing time off for COVID-19 reasons have expired, leaving many low-income workers with a hard choice between staying home without pay, sometimes at the risk of losing their jobs, or working sick or leaving sick family members home alone, thus contributing to the spread of the disease (Romig 2022a).

One of the most effective temporary measures implemented during the pandemic was expanding eligibility for, increasing the amount of, and extending the duration of unemployment insurance benefits. Before the pandemic expansion, only three in 10 unemployed workers received benefits (Bivens et al. 2021; Dube 2021). Older workers figure prominently among underemployed workers, the long-term unemployed, and discouraged workers who fall through cracks in the system. Extending unemployment insurance benefits not only helps long-term unemployed workers make ends meet, it also enables them to find better jobs and work that matches their skills, leading to higher earnings and longer-lasting employment (Farooq, Kugler, and Muratori 2022).

Another potentially useful pandemic reform was federal support for states offering short-time compensation. These programs, also known as “work-sharing” programs, compensate workers for reduced hours rather than requiring employers to lay off workers before they become eligible for benefits. Though many employers in the United States are not familiar with this option, which remains available in some states, it is popular in some countries and may be especially useful to older workers, who suffer worse consequences than younger workers when employment ties are severed (NELP 2020; NELP and CLASP 2016). Work-sharing may also accustom employers and workers to a shorter workweek, an additional benefit for older workers (Baker 2018).

These and other emergency measures taken during the pandemic show what is possible, but more lasting solutions are called for, including permanent unemployment insurance reform, EITC expansion, and paid leave policies.