You may have noticed: Things change.
That’s why I reread Joseph Coughlin’s “The Longevity Economy” as part of my preparation for 2022. Having just had my 81st birthday, it was part of my due diligence for a long and positive future.
Join me.
The book is a more important read today than when it was published five years ago.
Meet the MIT Age Lab
Coughlin is the founder and prime mover at the MIT Age Lab, one of the many research groups that make MIT one of the most exciting and vital institutions in the country. This is a book that should be required reading for corporate execs, elected officials and policy makers.
Regular people should read it too. It’s a tool for recasting our ideas about old age and retirement.
This book attacks, and destroys, the biggest bad idea about aging. In its place, the book builds an in-depth case for us to discover and develop the opportunities presented by the demographic change we’re going to experience over the next 30 years.
If we have the idea that old age is all bad, the future coming toward us can only be dismal. Why?
We’re an aging nation.
That’s a truth. Inescapable.
The truth about old age
So, let’s deal with the Biggest Bad Idea. “Old age,” Coughlin says, “is made up.”
Yes, you read that right. It doesn’t exist.
Coughlin calls it a social construct, an artificial creation. While we will continue to age and die, what older people can do and how they live is massively misrepresented by the prevailing idea of old age.
A concept from another age
Worse, our burdensome concept of old age is more than a century old. It’s from a time when life was dramatically shorter. Since then we’ve enjoyed what Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has called “the great escape” – our liberation from an early death that has increased life expectancy. It allows newborns to know their grandparents and, often, their great grandparents.
In spite of that change, it is still broadly accepted that when you are old, you are also needy, infirm and greedy. It happens when you reach age 65, or earlier. As part of that conventional wisdom in business, the concept of old age has limited corporate imagination to adult diapers, faster wheelchairs, hearing aids and replacement body parts.
The fastest growing population
In fact, the elderly are the fastest growing population group in the United States (not to mention most of the planet). And while many older people lack sufficient assets and income, the resources of the elderly dwarf the spending money of the young and of many in mid-career.
One important aspect of that future, Coughlin writes, is that it is more about women than about men. Although men now live longer than they did a century ago, we still die earlier, and women survive men. As a consequence, he tells us that women are the future. Not recognizing that, he writes, is why high-tech companies, which are largely populated by young men, are consistently clueless about product development.
The big change
So why is this book more important today than it was in 2017?
Simple: Covid-19.
The employment and labor force issues that he wrote about then – a shortage of workers in many specific areas – have hit our economy harder in the pandemic. Many older people decided it was a good time to retire. Others didn’t have a choice. While the labor force participation rate for those 55 and over actually rose during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, increasing from 39 to 39.7 percent, it fell dramatically as the virus hit, falling from 40.2 percent at the end of 2019 to 38.5 percent in October.
Covid-19 made things worse, causing what has been called “The Covid Retirement Boom,” which happened in an economy that now has more than 10 million unfilled jobs.
Bringing back older workers
Older workers could rejoin the labor force, fill some of those unfilled jobs and maybe, just maybe, curb inflation a bit. Having some older folks work longer might also increase productivity a bit.
That’s inconceivable if you think, as many corporations act, that anyone over 50 is “dead wood.” But Coughlin cites a 2016 National Bureau of Economic Research study which found that our economy would have grown faster had it not lost older workers and their experience. In other words, losing older, experienced workers is a good way to lose productivity, not gain it.
The same losses may increase the difficulty of rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. In a recent Forbes post, he observed that millennials and Generation Z have avoided the skilled trades.
Consequence?
The looming shortage in skilled trades
An aging workforce for the “boots on the ground” tasks of building. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, here are the percentage of workers over 40 in key trades:
- 65% of heavy equipment operators
- 56% of electricians
- 52% of electricity line workers
- 52% of welders
- 52% of pipefitters/plumbers
- 51% of civil engineers
- 49% of structural and ironworkers
We’ve got a great future to build, but you have to wonder how we’re going to “git ‘er done.”
Sources and References:
Elise Gould, “Older workers were devastated by the pandemic downturn and continue to face adverse employment outcomes, 4/29/2021 (EPI testimony for the Senate Special Committee on Aging) https://www.epi.org/publication/older-workers-were-devastated-by-the-pandemic-downturn-and-continue-to-face-adverse-employment-outcomes-epi-testimony-for-the-senate-special-committee-on-aging/
AARP Research: “Women, Work, and the Road to Resilience: Working Women at Midlife and Beyond,” 9/2021 https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/econ/2021/midcareer-older-women-workers-report.doi.10.26419-2Fres.00488.001.pdf
Don Lee, “Pandemic caused many boomers to retire. What that means for the economy – and everyone else,” 7/8/2021 https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-07-08/baby-boomers-pandemic-retirement-may-be-bad-for-economy
The book on Amazon: The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market 11/7/2017 https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Economy-Unlocking-Fastest-Growing-Misunderstood/dp/1610396634
FRED Economic data: Labor force Participation rate 55 and older: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11324230
Miguel Faria e Castro, “The COVID Retirement Boom,” 10/15/2021, https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2021/10/15/the-covid-retirement-boom
Richard W. Johnson, “Will Older Adults Return to the Workforce?,” 3/12/2021 https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/will-older-adults-return-workforce
Joseph Coughlin, “Even if the money flows, will workers be available to rebuild U.S. Infrastructure?,” 10/31/2021 https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2021/10/31/the-nations-infrastructure-has-a-bigger-problem-than-politics-its-baby-boomer–gen-x-retirement/?sh=50842eaf51c2
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Photo: Scott Burns, Underway on Chesapeake Bay
(c) Scott Burns, 2022