Wednesday, June 11, 2025
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

In this brave new age, we need to think more about age-friendly jobs: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail

While the number of age-friendly jobs had risen, those jobs were not necessarily being done by older workers.

October 18, 2022
in Linda Nazareth
Reading Time: 3 mins read
A A
In this brave new age, we need to think more about age-friendly jobs: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail

Photo by Annie Gray via Unsplash.

This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

By Linda Nazareth, October 18, 2022

As is true in the United States and in much of the world, Canada’s population and work force are getting older. According to the 2021 census, more than a fifth (22 per cent) were aged between 55 and 64 – an all-time high.

If at one time those older workers were looking forward to gold watches, pensions and rounds of golf, those days are gone. Whether it is to keep themselves active or to make up for the inflation-eroded value of their portfolios, many are not looking to retire early, or perhaps at all.

But this is presumably good in a world where employers frequently bemoan the lack of labour. Going forward, the work force will only get older and there are legitimate reasons to keep employees earning – for their financial well-being, but also because many industries will continue to need their contributions.

But in realistic terms, people look for different kinds of jobs as they age, with those that are less physically taxing and more flexible presumably the most in demand. Are jobs age-friendly enough to keep older workers interested?

In a September working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Daron Acemoglu, Nicolaj Sondergaard Muhlbach and Andrew J. Scott set out to find out whether that has been the case in the U.S. over the past few decades. To do so, they constructed an “Age-Friendly Job Index” that looked at the occupational characteristics of 873 jobs in terms of their attractiveness to older workers.

Examining each job for a host of characteristics including flexibility, telecommuting, physical job demands, pace of work, autonomy at work and paid time off, the NBER study came to the conclusion that over the past three decades, work in general has indeed become more age-friendly. That varied a bit by industry, with jobs in the finance and retail industries being the most age-friendly and including occupations such as insurance adjusters, financial managers and proofreaders. The least age-friendly jobs tended to be in manufacturing, agricultural and construction and involve a physical component of work.

Over all, it appears to be good news for those older workers who wanted to keep working – except that the researchers found that while the number of age-friendly jobs had risen, those jobs were not necessarily being done by older workers. Instead, they found that the jobs were disproportionately filled by women and college graduates.

This is not particularly surprising, given that the attributes that are deemed to make a job friendly to an older worker, such as the ability to telecommute, are also favourable to many other workers as well. Although the study did not quantify whether downright ageism was causing older workers to lose out on age-friendly jobs to younger ones, it did note that employers tend to prefer “high-productivity workers” and that, rightly or wrongly, younger college graduates were viewed as being in that category.

So if older workers have not grabbed up the age-friendly jobs, where are they working? Some of those workers who do have the characteristics that the market is looking for (including a postsecondary education) have been able to stay in the work force and are indeed employed at those age-friendly jobs, which are presumably in the occupations they have been in throughout their careers.

Others, and in particular men without a postsecondary education, might continue to be employed but they are not working in jobs that could be called age-friendly. Instead, they are disproportionately employed in old-economy sectors such as manufacturing and in conditions that in general are physically demanding.

Looking to Canada’s future of work, a few conclusions can be reached. The first is that the fact that jobs in general are getting more age-friendly is positive since it suggests that such jobs are getting better. Indeed, as well as their other positive characteristics, the NBER study found that the age-friendly jobs were the ones that paid the best and were also the ones where wages were rising the most quickly.

The flip-side, though, is that there are reasons to believe that older workers are not necessarily getting access to those jobs. If that is happening because they are actually less productive, then that should be addressed in some way by investments in retraining and reskilling whether by employers, government or the workers themselves. If, however, they actually are as productive as younger workers but are simply being shut out of them by ageism, that needs to be remedied.

Linda Nazareth is host of the Work and the Future podcast and Senior Fellow for economics and population change at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: Globe and Mail
Tags: Linda Nazarethjobsage-friendly jobs
Previous Post

Access to information: A quasi-constitutional right in peril

Next Post

Doctors have gone silent on gender dysphoria. That’s not good for patients: Shawn Whatley in the National Post

Related Posts

Companies can’t afford to ignore ‘quiet quitting’: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail
Columns

Companies can’t afford to ignore ‘quiet quitting’: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail

August 26, 2022
Might taxing ice cream help reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail
Columns

Climate change and the future of work: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail

August 2, 2022
When it comes to postsecondary and hiring, it’s a matter of degrees: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail
Columns

When it comes to postsecondary and hiring, it’s a matter of degrees: Linda Nazareth in the Globe and Mail

June 3, 2022
Next Post
Doctors have gone silent on gender dysphoria. That’s not good for patients: Shawn Whatley in the National Post

Doctors have gone silent on gender dysphoria. That's not good for patients: Shawn Whatley in the National Post

Newsletter Signup

  Thank you for Signing Up
  Please correct the marked field(s) below.
Email Address  *
1,true,6,Contact Email,2
First Name *
1,true,1,First Name,2
Last Name *
1,true,1,Last Name,2
*
*Required Fields

Follow us on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

  • Inside Policy Magazine
  • Annual Reports
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

Lightbox image placeholder

Previous Slide

Next Slide

Share

Facebook ShareTwitter ShareLinkedin SharePinterest ShareEmail Share

TwitterTwitter
Hide Tweet (admin)

Add this ID to the plugin's Hide Specific Tweets setting: