Where are the workers? The list of occupations suffering critical shortages in the U.S. keeps getting longer: teachers, nurses, bus drivers, social workers, accountants, air-traffic controllers. While the problem is relatively new, it’s becoming a long-term one. “The number of humans available to work is starting to go down,” said HR consultant Josh Bersin in a recent From Day One webinar. “Over the last four years or so, from the pandemic on, we talked to so many companies and heard the same thing over and over again: We don’t have enough people, we don’t have enough skills. We don’t know where to source them.”

A major cause of the problem is demographic: the Baby Boom generation is retiring, a trend that sped up during the pandemic, and fertility rates are declining all across the developed world. In 2024, for the first time, Generation Z will represent a larger portion of the workforce than the Baby Boomers.

Yet therein lies one of the solutions: persuading older workers to stay in the labor force longer, as well as creating opportunities for younger generations to have longer careers. In February, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline, “Here Comes the 60-Year Career.” The story profiled Millennials setting themselves up for six decades of work comprising multiple career switches, returns to school, detours, and sabbaticals. 

Millennials and younger generations have no choice but to think differently about their careers, the reporter Carol Hymowitz wrote. “Because they are likely to live healthily into their 90s or longer, they must learn to navigate 60-year careers instead of the traditional 40-year span.”

But longer careers punctuated by breaks and reinventions are not just the Millennials’ doing. The Boomers are already experimenting. In 2022, the job website Indeed noted an increase in the number of people “unretiring.” Short of savings or restless in retirement, older workers are increasingly stepping back into jobs they left a few years ago, this time looking for flexible hours, part-time consulting jobs, or even gig work. 

“We’ve had this model of working from the moment you graduate college or high school until you’re 65,” Sania Khan, chief economist at the talent intelligence platform Eightfold, told From Day One. “Employers are realizing that this is an outdated model.”

Though a growing part of the population, older workers have represented a shrinking portion of the workforce, especially during the pandemic. While labor-force participation among Americans aged 15–54 has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, it has not bounced back among those aged 55 and older, much of this due to excess retirements of Baby Boomers.

At the same time, the national unemployment rate has been below 4.5% for two years, and employers are struggling to find the workers they need with the skills they need.

This leaves employers wondering: how can we encourage workers to stay on the job?

In a Tight Labor Market, There Is No Room for Ageism 

“Necessity is kicking ageism to the curb, pushing businesses to reevaluate hiring strategies and perceptions when it comes to this essential part of any workforce,” reads an Eightfold report. “In a strange twist, the looming labor shortage may be the kick that’s needed to shift the narrative on age and employment. As the supply of workers tightens, organizations are finding themselves in a bind, and they must take a closer look at experienced workers, those with a lifetime of skills and wisdom to offer.”

There are 9.5 million open jobs in the U.S., but only 6.5 million unemployed workers, a labor shortage that affects almost every industry in almost every state, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Companies can’t afford to discriminate, and often-marginalized groups are reaping the benefits.

To recruit and retain older members of the workforce, employers are embracing age-inclusion. PNC and Bristol Myers Squibb have added benefits like workplace menopause support and healthcare to match. Fannie Mae and Booking.com now offer grandparent leave so workers can take time away from work to care for new grandchildren. Recruiters are scrubbing age-biased language from their job descriptions. Financial counseling services that include retirement planning are a popular new addition to total rewards. Some employers are offering “flextirement” arrangements that allow retirees to come back part-time or temporarily.

Some organizations are actively hiring from older demographics. Especially when the customer base is seniors, it makes sense that the company is staffing seniors as well. One of them is Naborforce, a gig-work platform where seniors can request help from “nabors” for tasks like setting up a computer, getting to the grocery store, or doing the laundry. The average Naborforce client is 83 years old. Almost three-quarters of nabors–the gig workers who power the platform–are 50 or older.

“There is a big group of untapped resources–empty nesters and retirees who are not looking for a job, but love the flexibility. They are craving purpose, they want to feel needed, and they’re craving connection,” founder Paige Wilson told From Day One.

Not only is the company’s gig workforce predominantly seniors, Wilson is actively recruiting older workers to her staff. In November, Naborforce piloted its first “golden internship” program. Paid interns come into the office 10–12 hours per week to advise on user experience, marketing, messaging, and business operations. The first intern, a former nabor and retired business owner, is in his 70s. “Our target market on all sides of our business are seniors or close to it,” said Wilson. “We are not discarding older people. We are hiring them like crazy,” Wilson said.

As Workers Retire, the Skills Gap Grows

Among companies whose workers skew older, workforce planning is getting tougher. In certain industries and roles, older workers are retiring, but no replacements are on their way.

For global logistics company Pitney Bowes, finding young workers with the right skills is getting harder. “Electromechanical [engineering] is a skill set that our service force is very much in need of,” said Andy Gold, the company’s chief HR officer. There are fewer qualified candidates coming out of schools and training programs than there used to be. Younger professionals seem to be more interested in programming the machines than building them, he said.

For now, the company is trying to recruit from within, finding workers who are willing to learn the new skills. They’re also talking to older workers about their retirement goals so they can train younger ones before clocking out for good. 

Gold isn’t the only one wondering where the talent went. In other industries whose workers are long-tenured and have decades of experience, the talent pool is drying up. “For some of the professional service jobs, for example, the qualifications needed are time-intensive,” said Jen Schramm, senior policy advisor at AARP. “[Companies] can look ahead in their workforce planning and see on the horizon that they will have a shortage. In the long-term, they will have to increase the labor pool of people that have the correct certifications or qualifications or licensing. But in the near term, they don’t have time to wait.”

Early this year, the Greater Richmond Transit Company, or GRTC, which operates mass transit services in Richmond, Va., experienced a bus-operator shortage (due in part to retirements) so severe that it interrupted normal service and blocked planned expansion projects. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the bus service and urban transit sector has the oldest median worker age–52.4 years–among all industries in the U.S.

As of January 2023, the GRTC employed about 230 bus operators; it needed 50 to return to pre-pandemic service and an additional 20 more to expand. The company couldn’t find the talent it needed, so GRTC created its own pool by covering the cost of commercial drivers-license training for new hires.

By November, that gap had been closed, with more than 300 full-time operators hired, 27 working on a part-time basis, and 35 more in training. GRTC also sweetened the deal for new hires, who got a signing bonus, and for all operators, who got a 43% pay raise.

The Value of Long-Term Knowledge and Loyalty

Some employers may not need to cultivate their own talent pools to fill immediate openings. Older workers are a solution to both the skills gap and the labor shortage, said Eightfold’s Khan. “Employers see that they have a skills gap. They know that they have to switch over to a skills-based workforce planning solution in the near future,” she told From Day One. “I think they haven’t started to see older workers as a resource quite yet.”

The world is spoiled with a wealth of knowledge represented by an aging workforce. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the number of people aged 65 and older grew five times faster than the whole U.S. population did in 100 years. In 1920 fewer than one in 20 Americans were 65 or older; as of 2020, it’s one in six. 

“We should give them a choice,” Khan said. “Those who want to continue working and feel that they’re capable should be able to, and they should be valued as a resource.”

Employers opting to fill vacant spots with younger, “cheaper” workers are losing institutional knowledge and wisdom built on decades of experience. Plus, older workers tend to be more loyal to their employers. “We’re going to see a very stark labor supply and demand imbalance very soon as these workers age out of the workforce and retire,” Khan said.

The Legacy Stage of One’s Career

If careers are getting longer and changing shape, with employees embracing career lattices instead of career ladders–could there be new stages too? Andrés Tapia, global strategist for diversity, equity, and inclusion at consultancy Korn Ferry, favors a new segment to working life, a denouement between career and retirement known as the “legacy stage.”

In the legacy stage, older professionals on their way to retirement rework their professional contributions with schedules, benefits, and compensation to match. “It will be about mentorship and wisdom,” Tapia said. In exchange for fewer hours, very flexible schedules, and sabbaticals, legacy workers may get lower pay and less decision-making power. 

“A lot of Boomers feel vigorous and in charge, they want to keep ‘riding the train,’” but some roles do need to be vacated so younger workers can move in and get the experience. “It’s about reciprocal adaptation between generations,” Tapia told From Day One. “Older workers have to stop diminishing the contributions of young workers and younger generations have to be inclusive of older ones.”

As workers age, they enjoy passing on their knowledge, said Schramm at AARP. “Companies that are savvy about having a multigenerational workforce, that’s something they leverage, but they do it from both sides”–giving younger workers the opportunity to pass their knowledge to older generations too.

“Many people are not ready to retire at age 65, but age discrimination really starts at age 55,” Tapia said. “That’s when people start feeling devalued.” But if we create a legacy phase where decades of knowledge is elevated to its own category, he argues, “rather than coasting by default, you coast by design.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.