The Aging Workforce: A Fresh Look (Episode #1)

In conjunction to the upcoming Labor Day holiday, we begin a series of blog posts related to aging and Atlanta’s workforce. Here’s Episode 1 of perhaps a half-dozen!

Like the country as a whole, Metro Atlanta is aging. According to the 2020 Census, the median age[1] in Metro Atlanta stands at 36.9 years[2], which is still lower than that of the state or nation as a whole (37.5 and 38.8 years, respectively). The Metro Atlanta median age, though, is up from 33.0 years back in 2000.[2] Naturally, as the population ages, larger numbers of workers near retirement. What does that mean for Atlanta’s workforce? Are there industries where we expect to see disproportionate numbers of retirements (and thus extra vacancies) in the next decade or so?

For leverage on these questions, we turn to the Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) data. The QWI is a part of the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. The Census Bureau partners with the state departments of labor, who supply Unemployment Insurance earnings data, which the Bureau supplements with Internal Revenue Service data and other inputs to yield quarterly estimates.[3]

Figure 1 shows the percent of employees age 55 and over by two-digit NAICS industry sector for Metro Atlanta as of the second quarter of 2023.[4] The red reference line shows the overall percentage of Atlanta’s workforce ages 55 and over.

As Figure 1 above shows, at least a quarter of workers employed in sectors 92 (Public Administration), 31-33 (Manufacturing), 61 (Educational Services), and 42 (Wholesale Trade) are ages 55 and over—each well above the overall average of 22.3%. In contrast, sectors 51 (Information), 71 (Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation), and 72 (Accommodation and Food Services) all have relatively small percentages of workers nearing retirement age.

Sector 62 (Healthcare and Social Assistance) also deserves special mention. While it only ranks #8 in terms of the percentage of workers ages 55 and over, Healthcare and Social Assistance has the most workers nearing retirement, with an estimated 81,970 employees in this age category.

We can take advantage of the granularity of the QWI data to dig deeper– in this case, by subsector (3-digit NAICS). Figure 2 displays the breakdown within sector 62 (Healthcare and Social Assistance), the job sector with the largest number of workers ages 55 and over. Again, the reference line represents the overall percentage of Atlanta’s workforce ages 55 and over.

Figure 2 above shows that subsector 623 (Nursing and Residential Care Facilities) has an especially high percentage of older workers, while subsectors 624 (Social Assistance) and 622 (Hospitals) both have well above the overall rate. subsector 621 (Ambulatory Health Care Services), on the other hand, is on level with the metrowide average.

Figure 3 below drills down into Sector 72 (Accommodation and Food Services), which at the two-digit NAICS has the lowest percentage of workers ages 55 and over.

As Figure 3 above shows, subsector 722 (Food Services and Drinking Places) has an extremely low percentage of older workers at 12.1%, while subsector 721 (Accommodation) is actually has an above average percentage of workers nearing retirement. But because subsector 722 has more than 10 times the employment of subsector 721 (238,529 vs. 22,992), the two-digit sector as a whole has a far lower percentage of employees nearing retirement than the overall figure.

These three charts raise all sorts of intriguing questions. Are we likely to see a wave of retirements among Personal Care Aides and similar caregivers just as the societal demand for such workers peaks? Or does employment in some industries just naturally trend either older or younger?

Unfortunately, the first of these questions cannot be addressed adequately with the QWI data, which focuses on industries rather than job types. We will examine these issues by utilizing a different data source– starting with episode 4 of this series. But the QWI does allow us to analyze age trends over time; we will take that up in episode 2.

Footnotes for Episode #1

[1] Just a reminder, median age means that that one half (50%) of the population is older and the other half (50%) is younger than this number.

[2] This statistic is calculated by keeping metro Atlanta (aka the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area if you want to be technical) at its current 29-county definition for both time periods. Atlanta’s MSA had nine fewer counties back in 2000; the questions of why this is the case and how MSAs are defined merit their own separate blog post.

[3] Unlike the data products from the LEHD program we have used in prior blog posts, the QWI provides data more often (quarterly instead of annual), for more age categories, and at a more granular classification level (down to the 4-digit NAICS industry group instead of just the 2-digit NAICS sector). The trade-off is that QWI data are only available for larger geographic units: states, CBSAs, counties, and workforce investment areas (while the Residential Area Characteristics, Workforce Area Characteristics, and Origin-Destination datasets are all available way down to the Census block).

[4] For clarity’s sake, we have excluded sectors 11 (Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting), 21 (Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction), and 22 (Utilities) from this graph because they together account for less than one percent of Metro Atlanta’s jobs.