Want to understand our aging workforce? Look to the U.K.

Marketplace

American Public Media

Business, News

4.6 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By 2050, around a quarter of people in the U.K. will be 65 or older — about ten years before the U.S. reaches that milestone. For our ongoing “Age of Work” series, host Kai Ryssdal and ADP chief economist Nela Richardson take a trip to across the pond to understand how businesses and the government are preparing for an aging population. Plus, hear how one Brit is navigating the job market in his 60s, and check in on a London honey shop owner we last spoke with during Brexit.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On the program today, London Calling.
0:05.8	Our series, The Age of Work, continues from American Public Media.
0:10.9	This is Marketplace.
0:17.9	In London, England, the studios of the BBC, I'm Kai Rizzdall.
0:26.3	It is Tuesday today, July the 15th.
0:28.7	Good as always to have you along, everybody far from home, though we are.
0:33.9	We've been reporting the past six months or so about the aging prime age American workforce,
0:39.3	people 25 to 54, who have been the key drivers of the American economy for a hundred years.
0:46.3	The catch is demographics does indeed turn out to be destiny.
0:50.9	And by the middle of this century, those productive prime age workers are going to
0:56.0	be in Africa and Southeast Asia, not North America and not Europe either. The UK in particular
1:02.7	is 10 or 15 years farther down that path than the United States is. So here we are. And by we,
1:10.1	I mean me and Neilila Richardson, the chief
1:11.7	economist at ADP, our partners and funders on our series, The Age of Work, three days on the show
1:17.5	this week in London getting a glimpse of what may turn out to be our short-term economic
1:23.7	future. I should say here before we go on that we know there are things happening in the
1:30.6	economy back home. But as I've said before and as remains true, the value this program brings
1:36.9	is covering not just what happens, but why it's happening and why it matters, the long game,
1:44.0	which is why we've come all this way.
1:47.3	All right, here we go.
2:14.3	Thank you. By 2050, one in every four Brits, is going to be 65 or older.
2:18.0	That's more than 10 years ahead of the best guesses for the United States.
	...

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