"70" is the new "50" - Ageing in the Professions
Posted By Rob Millard - 1 Comments -
Click image to enlargeStephanie West-Allen has an important post on her blog, on the topic of accommodating older members of the legal profession that want / need to remain in practice. Titled: Who are you calling old? With 104 being the new 80, graying doesn't lead to grazing in some pasture, her comments would of course be relevant to any professional service firm and beyond the professions too. Why is it important enough for me to highlight especially? Well, "ageing talent" is one of the top ten critical strategic issues facing professional service firms today, according to the Managing Partners' Forum strategy survey that we fielded in July/August this year.
My colleagues Bruce MacEwen, Andrew Hedley and I are still busy processing the results of this survey, so no more on that for now. Suffice it to say that they make fascinating reading. Watch this space for a full report in due course!
Back to ageing talent. Another point about retention of older talent is simply economic. Firstly, if 104 is indeed the new 80 and 70 is the new 50, then the assumptions that most of western society has made about funding retirement go out the window. Presumably it will continue to take until early 20s to grow up and attend university, before becoming a fully fledged productive member of society. That leaves one about 40 years to accumulate enough wealth to fund up to another 40 or 50 years of retirement. That's quite a big "ask!"
The other big issue is illustrated in the above slide from a presentation titled "The World and the Legal Profession in the 21st Century" that forms my introduction to a two-day session on trends and best practice in law firms that I am honoured to have been invited to present at the ALA Regions 2 & 3 Conference in Nashville TS on 28 and 29 September. Click on the image to see a larger, more legible version. The data is from the United Nations 2004 Population Revision, Medium Variant Projections.
It tracks the proportion of the sector of the population that according to current convention is productive and income generating, to those that are retired and therefore no longer productive and, in many cases, dependent on society to a greater or lesser degree for their livelihood, from 1950 through to 2050. Note that these projections are simple extrapolations. There are not many uncertainties besides epidemics, genocide and war to accommodate in demographic projections like these!
Bottom line: The ratio of people falling into the "productive" age cohorts that are "supporting" those that have retired are as follows:
| 2007 | 2025 | 2050 | |
| Japan | 2.3 : 1 | 1 : 1 | 1 : 3 |
| Europe | 3.5 : 1 | 2.3 : 1 | 1.2 : 1 |
| China | 10.1 : 1 | 4.0 : 1 | 1.6 : 1 |
| United States | 4.1 : 1 | 3 : 1 | 2.1 : 2 |
| India | 15.7 : 1 | 9 : 1 | 4 : 1 |
To be clear: In the USA, the number of "producers" supporting "retirees" is going to drop by 50% by 2025 and halve by 2050. In Japan, the country will move from 2.3 "producers" supporting 1 "retiree" today, to 1 "producer" supporting 3 "retirees," over the same period. Care to guess what that is going to do to welfare spending?
Small wonder then that discriminating on the basis of age is now illegal in several countries, including the United Kingdom. It borders on criminal to force somebody out of the productive sector of society while that person is productive, knowing that person is being condemned to penury in old age as a result. Besides that, the competition for mid level and senior talent is such that it is debatable whether firms can afford to lose productive, talented senior professionals either.
On those professionals, it also places the burden of ensuring that they stay sharp and current, both in intellectual acuity and in terms of keeping up with technology and other new developments. It is inevitable that firms are going to move more to performance metrics rather than age. After all, if one's performance is up to scratch, who really needs to care about age?
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Rob, thanks for mentioning my post. The graying is an important issue.
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