For accuracy, The Great Resignation should be renamed The Grey Resignation.

Nearly seventy percent of the five million people who left work in the US during the pandemic were older than fifty-five.

Many older leavers are cheerfully heading off to retirement with more valuable homes and fatter stock portfolios. Importantly this reverses an important pre-Covid trend towards older workforces.

In the US, the percentage of workers aged fifty-five or older rose from thirteen percent in 2000 to twenty-four percent in 2019 and similar patterns have emerged elsewhere, which is precisely what a lot of governments wanted. (Governments lifted retirement ages to address fears that aging populations would struggle to be supported by a shrinking share of younger workers. Also the longer governments can keep people working and paying taxes, the less they have to care for them.)

Now older people are in the throes of a sweeping disappearing act, vanishing from their desks at higher rates than their mid-career colleagues in workplaces around the world. Good for them, not so good for businesses now suffering a brain drain of experienced workers.

Now more than ever business needs experienced older workers, inside and out of the boardroom. Companies need to think more about how to attract and retain older workers. Autonomy and freedom will major draws.

If you’re an older worker looking to get a job, there’s never been a better time. You hold all the cards.

Don’t get a job that suits a business.

Get a job that suits you.

References

“Where have all the older workers gone and will they ever come back?” Financial Times (2022)

“Why isn’t labor force participation recovering?” Goldman Sachs (2021)