Catalyze August 2022

CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 21
CREATING RIPPLING EFFECTS IN AN
AGING WORKFORCE CONTINUED...
Those companies who are able to leverage that age diversity are those companies that
are going to be more competitive in the marketplace. We also know that age
discrimination is rampant. We've seen that accelerate, particularly since the pandemic.
In fact, we've been doing a survey for many, many years, and nearly 75% of those
respondents indicated that they've seen or experienced age discrimination, particularly
in the workforce, which is one of the highest numbers since we've been actually
collecting this data. So whether it's the economic implications in terms of exactly what
we're seeing, which has a ripple effect in terms of the workforce and a lot of the shifts
that we're seeing in the workplace, and even in some cases, people returning back to the
labor market because of the cost of living has increased so significantly or the age
discrimination that exists, which is stifling economic growth for all of us, we have some
major issues to address in addition to the financial and the workplace issues that I just
mentioned. We also have to grapple with some of the inequities, and I'm going to refer to
inequities in a couple of ways. One is the fact that not only is the population aging, but
we also know that in many cases, people are living much longer. Now, what we also
know is that just because someone is living much longer, their ability to live those extra
years in good health has not kept pace. So in other words, we are seeing an increase in
life expectancy, but we're not seeing an increase in healthy longevity. So you have this
huge gap. So how we start to address those inequities within and across the globe is a
huge issue that we're going to have to grapple with.