Trend: Longevity Redefines Work
Week of August 20th, 2025
Unlocking the Hidden Workforce of the Longevity Economy––World Economic Forum
In response to the birthrate freefall and aging population crisis, the WEF recently released Futureproofing the Longevity Economy – Innovations and Trends, identifying key ways that governments and companies can build age-inclusive workplaces that could save global economies. The document discusses crucial ways to adopt flexible working models—such as part-time roles, hybrid work or phased retirement—that would retain valuable employees longer and improve access to talent. We need to evolve the mindset around retirement from being a single event to a longer journey, by reducing working hours or moving to a contract basis.
The Longevity Dividend (A Shift to Preventative Health Is the Key to Our Workforce Future)––International Monetary Fund
London Business School economics professor Andrew Scott lays out why aging populations should be embraced, not feared. The fact that humanity is living longer, healthier lives is an opportunity. He identifies the vast changes needed, including a focus on preventative health that needs to start in childhood and no later than middle age. Also, he stresses the need to make measures of healthy life expectancy a key metric in allocating health expenditure, rather than measuring output in terms of treating disease and performing operations.
Retiring Retirement: Rethinking Growth in the Age of Longevity––Forbes
UniCredit’s recent Longevity Economic Forum in Milan was focused on how to rethink lives, meaning, work and financial concepts in an aging world. Experts spoke on how traditional assumptions about retirement, careers, and consumer behavior are no longer viable, yet few governmental, financial, or business institutions have adapted. Three unavoidable actions: 1) working longer (with many countries upping retirement ages), 2) bringing more women of all ages into the workforce and creating policies like shared parental leave, and 3) welcoming migration: increase (legal) immigration and encourage their employment. An expert from Stanford Longevity Center argues we need a culture shift from retirement to “re-inspirement”—a reinvention of purpose, vitality, and contribution in the bonus decades more people are now given.
People Are Living––And Working––Longer. Here’s How We Can Adapt––McKinsey Global Institute
The report offers statistics and charts on the implications of how our aging world combined with plummeting fertility rates will impact everything, from consumer spending trends to the workforce. It explores how the presence of healthy older people in the workforce benefits everyone. And it identifies policy and employer strategies such as intergenerational mentorship programs, upskilling older workers with digital literacy training, taking a hard line on age-neutral hiring, and getting creative with flexible schedules. The study spotlights companies taking action, such as ANZ, the Australia and New Zealand bank, working on diverse fronts to create a workplace culture where “age is no barrier,” thanks to multiple career extension options, the elimination of qualifications-based career advancement, and age-inclusive recruitment ads.
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