This review has been commissioned as part of the UK Government’s Foresight Future of Manufacturing Project. This paper discusses the manufacturing sector’s preparedness for changing age demographics. Over the next forty years, the number of people over traditional retirement age will grow rapidly, while those of traditional working age will shrink. For most people, extended lifespan will not mean extended “old age”, but rather more time spent in good health, and greater disposable time and income than they had earlier in life. While longer lives are a cause to celebrate, they also create a range of economic, cultural and political challenges, especially the need to improve the economic "dependency ratio", by extending working life for many, or all, people.

For the manufacturing sector, there are two major challenges. If it fails to develop more effective strategies for using older workers, it will find itself faced with increasingly severe labour shortages. If it fails to understand the needs and aspirations of a growing older population it will lose an increasing proportion of its markets to competitors. Both are avoidable, and the UK has some distinctive strengths in this emerging world. There are also some signs that manufacturers are responding, but probably not yet with sufficient priority or urgency.