Occupations Dominated by Workers Aged 55-Plus

The older workforce is large and getting larger. Workers aged 55 or older accounted for 24 percent of the nation's employed in 2019. This is up from 20 percent in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In many jobs—such as flight attendant, economist, and bus driver—older workers account for more than one-third of the employed. In a handful of occupations, people aged 55 or older are more than half of the total...

Occupations in which more than 50 percent of workers are aged 55 or older
76.9%: funeral service managers
71.4%: shoe and leather workers and repairers
63.2%: legislators
62.5%: etchers and engravers
60.0%: embalmers and funeral attendants
56.9%: farmers and ranchers
55.8%: crossing guards
53.5%: tailors and dressmakers
52.9%: judges and magistrates

It is perhaps fitting that funeral service manager and embalmer/funeral attendant are in the short list of occupations dominated by the oldest workers. Who better to do these tasks than those soon to become the product of their labor? At the other extreme, the 55-plus age group accounts for fewer than 10 percent of bartenders, waiters and waitresses, emergency medical technicians, physician assistants, and computer research scientists.

Source: Demo Memo analysis of Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, 2019