Old man yells at colleagues

We’re getting old.

The ‘Elder Swell’ has long been touted as a ticking time bomb of welfare payments and healthcare demands. But it turns out things could be even more dramatic than previously feared.

Next year, the UN will once again revise their population projections. Global population shrinkage is estimated to start in 2084, but there is speculation it could come much earlier.

There are myriad talking points here - some good (the miracle of modern medicine and increasing healthspan) and some more challenging (1.5 million Australians, for example, are experiencing a ‘care squeeze’ between children and elderly parents).

But it’s the world of work that’s been the latest topic du jour. 

Denmark recently passed a law to raise the state pension age to 70 by 2040. In Australia, tradies have called for differentiated pension ages for manual labourers. Zoomers are looking ahead with trepidation, with 38% expecting to work to their mid-late 70s.

If people are living longer, it makes sense that they will also work for longer, at least in some capacity. Governments are keen to ease the strain on the welfare system, and a twenty year retirement is a long stretch of doing the crossword and tending to the garden.

Unfortunately, ageism is rife in workplaces. 70 per cent of Aussies believe it is a serious problem. In the US, 99% of workers over the age of 40 reported ageism in the workplace. To put that in context, ageism begins having completed barely 40% of a standard career. 

There’s plenty of reasons for this, including a hypothesis that professional decline starts earlier than we’d like to admit, technology increasing the demand for digital natives, and a quickening pace of societal change widening the cultural generation gap (see: Brexit, Voice to Parliament, speaking to the manager). 

This is not only a challenge to overcome, but a trend to actively reverse. It may require an entirely different approach to career building, or perhaps a deeper appreciation of the wisdom of experience. 

Either way, we can all at least agree 40 isn’t old. Right? RIGHT?!