The US Economic Outlook Stinks Because We're Using An Obsolete Definition Of 'Working Age Adults'

Much of the pessimism about future growth stems from the aging of the U.S. population: the baby boomers, the largest generation in American history, are beginning to retire, leading to much lower labor force participation rates among adults, a trend that began even before the Great Recession and has accelerated since:

Credit Suisse

Credit Suisse suggests a different way of looking at this situation. They point out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be increasing numbers of older Americans continuing to work past traditional retirement ages.

This chart indicates that older Americans will be more willing to work through their sixties and into their seventies in 2022 than in 2012:

Credit Suisse argues that this change in the behavior of older Americans, and the increased desire of younger Americans to go to college, means that our current definition of "working age adults" is obsolete. If we change our definition of working age adults from the current standard of people between the ages of 15 and 64 to people between 20 and 69, growth rates in the working age population suddenly become far more promising over the rest of this decade: