Keith Hayden, a 53-year-old software engineer, started looking for a job last fall. He quickly realized that the interviewer had AI at the forefront of his mind and that Hayden, who had already adapted to the big innovation changes of the past 20 years, didn’t have the best answer. So he bought a subscription to Claude and started learning more.
With AI rapidly changing the way software engineers work, I knew I had to adapt because I wasn’t in a financial position to retire early. After doing some experiments, he said he’s “optimistically skeptical” about AI’s ability to write code well, but hopes there’s still room for it in the new era because he not only works but loves his job. “I’m one of those weird people who enjoys code,” he says. “When you let the AI do it, it takes a little bit less fun out of it.”
Hayden is one of those Gen Xers and baby boomers who spent decades honing their skills, climbing the career ladder, and hoping to exit the workforce on their own terms. They thought they had made the corporate world understand, but then the AI revolution happened.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, 58% of adults under 30 said they had used ChatGPT, but as of early 2025, only a quarter of adults between 50 and 64 said the same. Some older employees are choosing to retire early rather than wait until their roles become redundant or navigate the office chaos their bosses promise to bring about with AI. But there are also many people who want or need to remain employed. The percentage of workers 55 and older increased from 10% in 1994 to 25% in 2022, according to U.S. Census data. An AARP study last fall found that 7% of people who quit their jobs last year amid economic uncertainty found that other retirees used their free time to pick up AI-powered hobbies. According to a study by the London School of Economics, around half of baby boomers in the workforce said they use AI.
So far, it’s AI-native new graduates who are having the most trouble finding jobs. As AI moves off the bottom rung of the career ladder, more experienced workers will find their decades of expertise and ability to discern normal output from the slope that AI produces is valuable. But that often means having to learn new tricks to keep or get a job, breaking down ageist stereotypes and impending layoffs that disproportionately affect higher-paid older workers.
“This is the first time we’ve seen technology innovation benefit older workers more than younger workers in terms of job security,” said Heather Tinsley Fix, senior employer engagement advisor at AARP. “Deep experience and expertise in a particular occupation are all skills that older workers tend to have, including the soft skills of critical thinking and understanding what’s going on at a systems level.”
Gen
Very few people live to work or work to live. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, especially when thinking about retirement. They need to have a well-organized retirement portfolio, but they also want to have a purpose that will anchor them in society. With social change on the horizon, you may be wondering whether you want to make that impact within the office or elsewhere.
Daniel Jolles, a behavioral scientist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said: “Big changes like coronavirus have caused many people to ask themselves, ‘What is the point of my job? What do I want from my future? Is this what I really want to do?'” “AI is forcing people to ask a lot of the same questions.” Some people quit high-risk jobs for fear of getting sick during the peak of the pandemic, or decided they wanted to retire after working from home. About 1 million more people left the workforce than expected in 2020, many of whom were forced out of the labor force due to long-term unemployment, according to the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. “The worst retirement outcomes occur when people are forced into retirement unexpectedly,” says Jolls.
For older workers looking for work, the anxiety is palpable. Stacey Gilchrist planned to remain in her former medical management position until her retirement. But she’s been looking for work for the past two years after being laid off, and now 57 years old, she’s had to learn new rules for changing recruitment strategies, eventually hiring a career coach to help her. She works on contract with an AI health tech company to train an AI agent to ask questions like a nurse would ask. While AI presents some new opportunities, it has also created new obstacles for her to navigate in the job search process. “I call them scammers,” she says.
Despite their frustrations, older workers aren’t rebelling against AI the way new graduates are. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z is increasingly worried and angry about AI. A Quinnipiac University poll found that Gen Z and Millennials are more likely than Gen X and Baby Boomers to believe that AI will lead to fewer jobs. “If you’re nearing the end of your career, you’re going through a lot,” says Trevor Hawkins, manager of Canadian operations at recruitment agency ManpowerGroup. Gen “We’ve been through many economic ups and downs. We’ve weathered quite a few storms now, so I don’t think we’ll be too pessimistic.”
A 47-year-old woman who works in legal sales and asked that I not use her name to protect her job says that introducing AI late in her career has caused cognitive dissonance. Although she has moral concerns about technology’s impact on the environment, she also notices how technology has increased efficiency. This shift in thinking came after employers encouraged employees to do more and do it with AI. “It’s being forced,” she says. “There’s no question about it.” Despite all the benefits of AI, such as being able to quickly create presentations, she describes the process of learning how to use AI on the job as “tiring” and says she took the job because she wanted work-life balance while raising her children. She had it until the AI upped the ante. Now, she is looking to the future and planning for the last few years of her career (she plans to take early retirement), focusing on the interpersonal skill sets needed for presentations and training content. “Most people who work in corporations are just trying to get to a point where they’re financially OK,” she says. “You never know when your ticket will be written.”
Others are still working and have less enthusiasm and concern for AI, but are biding their time and are not willing to learn new tricks. James Seeger, 54, works in customer service and is looking to retire within the next five years. Although employers aren’t actively promoting AI, Seeger said he still believes the technology will lead to layoffs. “It might be a good idea to learn AI, but I’m not into it,” he says.
Seager’s identity is not tied to his work and has been successfully saved throughout his career. Now, he wants to maintain his health care and save a little more money, but adapting to a changing workforce isn’t on his mind. “If I won the lottery, I can hear people saying, ‘Oh, I’d still work.’ Those people are idiots,” Seeger says. “I’ll be gone.”
amanda huber I’m a senior correspondent for Business Insider, covering the technology industry. She writes about the biggest technology companies and trends.
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