Conventional wisdom has it that after age 50, you are doomed if you want to find a great job.
While there is age discrimination, according to the Wall Street Journal, more people ages 50 and older are working full-time and becoming entrepreneurs.
According to the Rand Corporation, more older-worker friendly jobs exist now than 50 years ago.
In fact, American employers are having a hard time finding skilled workers with experience, and this is good news for older workers. When there is a shortage of skills, older workers get jobs, the Rand Corporation finds.
Baby Boomers, nearly retirement age, are better educated than previous generations. A Harvard University study found that older adults have about the same number of years education as 25-year-olds.
Another study, Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Munich, found that rates of errors by younger workers were higher than older workers in assembly line work. The same group studied workers in an insurance company and found that productivity tends to increase with age.
More older workers than ever are working full-time. Since 1995, the number of seniors working full time has tripled. According to BLS statistics, 62 percent of workers aged 65 or older work full-time.
Seniors are not just working for others, either. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation showed that people between the ages of 55 and 64 accounted for 24.3 percent of all entrepreneur in 2015.
Of those older workers who launched their own businesses, 24 percent did so to supplement their income. A slightly higher percentage, 27 percent, said they started businesses to pursue their own interests.
Only 4 percent said they started a business because they couldn't find a job.
