Depending on their profession and its demands, older workers don’t necessarily become less able to work or less productive as they age.

So says a brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. With many workers choosing to work longer so that they can improve their retirement security, it can be challenging for older people to find decent-paying work—or to be able to hang onto a job—at least in part because of perceptions about older people’s abilities to perform satisfactorily in the workplace.

Authors Anek Belbase, a research fellow at CCR, and Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher, a CCR research economist, examined data on the cognitive ability of older workers, and whether they might or might not be able to work longer and still perform as expected. The study, the authors said, “review[ed] the research literature to assess how cognitive aging affects the ability to work during ages 50-70.”

While cognitive aging could hinder productivity by reducing the brain’s processing ability (“fluid” intelligence), the study said that age by itself is not a reliable explanation for the variability in productivity among workers aged 20–65. And the research also indicated that productivity generally does not decline with age.

Two cognitive factors explain this, it found: crystallized intelligence (knowledge that accumulates with age) can offset declines in fluid intelligence (the capacity to process new intelligence).

While the latter can, and does, decline to varying degrees with age, the former can help to make up for it, with the exception of a few professions in which a high degree of fluid intelligence is essential (such as air traffic controllers, who must have the ability to make split-second decisions).

The study found that declining fluid intelligence is often offset by accumulated knowledge, and people with a high reserve in fluid capacity are more likely to have that fluid capacity act as a buffer against decline.

Experienced workers in less skilled jobs might have more fluid intelligence than their job requires, if for instance they have been performing the same tasks for years and no longer require much fluid intelligence to deal with them.

People in more skilled jobs who have years of experience behind them have more accumulated knowledge to draw on, which offsets a slowdown in fluid intelligence and keeps them productive.

Pharmacists, for example, who have worked for years in their profession have amassed a vast store of “crystallized intelligence” that keeps them productive because of their experience and the knowledge of their work that they have already amassed.

The study concluded that only a minority of workers are vulnerable to a slowdown in cognitive ability: those in jobs that require very high levels of fluid intelligence and those who experience cognitive impairment (i.e., dementia).

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Older workers&rsquo; job performance not necessarily tied to aging

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Older workers’ job performance not necessarily tied to aging