Although age bias remains the norm, the value-add of experienced workers in the tech industry is becoming harder to ignore.
A Bank of America Workplace Benefits white paper argues that recruiting and retaining older workers is becoming more important as populations age, treating age-inclusive benefits as performance drivers.
Bank of America, director of financial gerontology Cynthia Hutchins said: “The retention of these older workers is an idea that is becoming much more well-received. It’s almost a business imperative to institute those types of benefits” to retain older workers and attract younger ones.
Yet plenty of companies still design careers as if effectiveness peaks early, as if speed and innovation are exclusively the young’s game.
Moody’s Analytics, chief economist Mark Zandi laid out the split in a 2018 analysis, pitching “albatross theory” against “wise man theory” in how firms value older staff.
Zandi and colleagues used US state-level ADP data and argued that post-retirement-age workers slowed wage growth and productivity, partly due to reluctance to adopt new technologies.
More recent research from AARP and the OECD points the other way, finding firms with more 50-plus workers are more productive, with a 10-percentage-point increase tied to roughly 1.1 per cent higher productivity.
Boston Consulting Group found in 2022 that cross-generational teams outperform homogeneous ones when older workers’ judgment and mentoring meet younger workers’ digital skills.
A 2025 study in the journal Intelligence found processing speed declines after early adulthood, but many capabilities relevant to complex work improve into midlife, peaking overall around 55 to 60.
In the US, Urban Institute analysis of survey data from 1992 to 2016 found more than half of workers above 50 were pushed out of long-held jobs before choosing to retire.
Spending by people over 55 is projected to approach $15 trillion a year by the end of this decade, yet many firms still treat older customers as an afterthought.
Investors are starting to notice, with Vanguard’s The Economics of a Greying World pointing to ageing and slower labour-force growth as a drag on expansion, making longer working lives a key adjustment.
Economist Andrew J. Scott argues in his 2024 book, The Longevity Imperative, that longevity can boost growth if societies invest in health, skills, and age-inclusive work rather than treating it as a fiscal burden.
Ageism remains widespread in hiring, promotion, and redundancy, yet workforce age is rarely disclosed or scrutinised as it is for gender or ethnicity, leaving a significant governance gap.
