When it comes to work, age isn’t just a number

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At 91, Alf Dubs has two measures guiding his decision to continue as a Labour peer in the UK’s House of Lords. The first is personal: can he make a contribution, particularly on refugee issues, an area he has some expertise on, not least because in 1939 he fled Czechoslovakia on Kindertransport to arrive in Britain. The second is whether family and colleagues think he has the mental fitness. If there’s any sign he “is losing it,” they are to “please, please tell me”, he says. The former MP does not want the same fate as elderly peers he has seen “wandering around the Lords looking totally lost”.

The new Labour government is expected at a later date to force peers to retire from the House of Lords at the end of the parliament during which they turn 80. “I’m not sulking,” says Dubs who personally has “no problem” with such a proposal.

Under more urgent plans outlined in this week’s King’s Speech, Labour axed hereditary peers. But Dubs wants to go further, favouring an elected second chamber. He believes age is a “very blunt instrument . . . one has to be careful you don’t discriminate”. There are peers, such as Neil Kinnock (82) and Michael Heseltine (91) “who make important contributions”. Tenure rather than age may be a more useful guide.

Debate over whether one can be too elderly for a job had become pressing in the US in recent weeks after a series of blunders by President Joe Biden. The issue ultimately pushed Biden, 81, to stand down from seeking a second term as president on Sunday, following pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors.

Discussion about the president’s age feeds into a wider debate, articulated by Irish writer, Fintan O’Toole: “Biden, fairly or otherwise, is the lightning rod for deep generational discontents.” In other words, anger over older generations hoarding jobs and wealth.

Globally, Biden and Trump — who is 78 — are in the minority. Pew Research found the median age of national leaders to be 62 on May 1. The largest share of global leaders (34 per cent) were in their 60s. Roughly a fifth (22 per cent) were in their 50s; 19 per cent in their 70s; and 16 per cent in their 40s. Biden was among the 5 per cent of leaders in their 80s. The latest UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, is 61, replacing 44-year-old Rishi Sunak.

Working older is a prospect for more of us as pension ages increase in tandem with life expectancy. But also as Andrew Scott points out in his book, The Longevity Imperative, “given fertility trends, firms will find themselves competing with one another for fewer younger workers and increasingly turning to older workers”.

To do so they will have to overcome ageism. While this has only been exacerbated by Biden and the House of Lords, it is a persistent problem. In his 1974 book, Working, Studs Terkel wrote that while “the science of medicine has increased our life expectancy” employers had not caught up. “The science of business frowns upon the elderly.”

Terkel cited Labour economist John Coleman who took — and lost — a number of blue-collar jobs as part of his research, leaving him feeling “demoralised”. “I had an inkling of how professionals my age feel when they lose their job and their confidence begins to sink,” Coleman said. He was 51.

Emily Andrews, the deputy director of work at the Centre for Ageing Better, says that rather than seeing employees solely “through an age lens”, it is more important “whether people can do their jobs”. Scott agrees it is reasonable for someone elected to a senior job to prove their cognitive ability and fitness for the role. “The problem is demanding it only from those aged, say, over 80. We think of age only in terms of decline — health, cognition — but some things increase, for example, experience,” he says.

To make way for fresh talent and dynamic teams, Scott says employers need to remain innovative while avoiding ageism and “denying older people rights and opportunities”. That means making sure institutions adjust and adapt to include all ages.

This isn’t about special pleading — the young might not believe it, but ageing happens to them too.

emma.jacobs@ft.com