AARP CEO Talks Older Workforce, Unretirement in LinkedIn News Interview

En español | AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins spoke with LinkedIn News on Monday about our efforts to support the 50-plus workforce, fight age discrimination and more.

Jenkins highlighted the country’s tight labor market and the fact that “a lot of our members want to go back into the workplace or stay in the workplace longer.” There were 11.2 million job openings in the U.S. in July, up from 10.8 million openings a year earlier and marking the eighth straight month of job openings north of 11 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Jenkins said that employers’ struggle to get and keep employees has led them to increasingly rely on older workers remaining in or returning to the workforce. Research has also identified a growing trend of people returning to the labor market after retirement. “For many people, it is ‘I want to go back to work because work provides me that fulfillment and purpose in my life,’” Jenkins said, though she noted that “others have to go back financially because they don’t have enough money to live on.”

At the same time, she noted the prevalence of age discrimination in the labor market, citing a recent AARP survey which found that nearly 8 in 10 AARP members experienced some form of age discrimination last year.

Watch the full interview.