Older Workers Accounted for All Net Employment Growth in Past 20 Years

Total U.S. employment grew by 11,767,000, or 8.5%, in the 20 years ending in December 2020.¹All that growth—11,879,000, or 101% of the total—was due to increased employment of people age 60 and older. Meanwhile, the net employment change over the past two decades of people ages 16-59 was -112,000 (-1% of the total change), despite this younger group being 3.8 times as large as the older group in December 2000 and still 2.4 times as large in December 2020.