Abstract It has long been asserted that the attitudes and behaviours of employers encourage early withdrawal from the labour market. This paper will draw on the results of the global ageing survey on the Future of Retirement to ask how widespread negative attitudes and stereotypes among employers are and whether these attitudes influence behav- iour towards older employees. Introduction Evidence from across the OECD countries suggests that economic, industrial and organisational changes in both the private and public sectors of the labour market have driven down the labour force participation of older people. There is also a marked decline in economic activity among men aged 65 and over in advanced economies. While around one third of men of this age are still economically active in Asia and Latin America, this falls to less than one fifth in North America and less than one tenth in Europe (see Table 1 below). Indeed, at the turn of the 21 st century, the labour force participation rate of men aged 65-69 years was over 50% only in two countries, Israel and Mexico. The labour force participation rate for this group was less than 20% in about two thirds of OECD countries. Table 1. Percentage of economically active men by age and region, 2005 Age World Latin Asia North Europe America America 50–54 90.7 89 92.4 86.2 84.3 55–59 80.6 81.2 83.4 77.3 67.2 60–64 64.1 69.5 70.6 57.0 34.5 65+ 30.2 37.2 36.9 18.0 7.7 Source: ILO (n.d.) Globalisation and increasing competition have exacerbated this on-going process. Across Europe and North America, older workers are targets for redundancy during recessions, and once unemployed are unlikely to find work again (Raeside and Khan, 2003; Harper, 2006). Research in the United Kingdom, for example, reveals that older workers had been targeted for early retirement or redundancy in almost 90% of downsizing organisations (Harper, 2006). Research has also pointed to both a forthcoming skills crisis and experience drain which will result from the ageing of societies, and the continued drain of older workers from our workforces (ibid.). Indeed, there is consistent evidence revealing a lack of practices designed to promote or main- tain the inclusion of older people in the work force (OECD, 2006). Furthermore, with the global prospect of ageing populations, most of the developing countries will face the reality of shrinking workforces and the problem of manag- ing their labour market in such a situation in order to achieve sustainable economic growth (Nordheim, 2004). Role of Employers It has long been asserted that the attitudes and behaviours of employers encourage early withdrawal from the labour market (McKay and Middleton, 1998; Lumsdaine, 1996; Scales and Scase, 2000). There are several key contribut- ing components to this assertion. Firstly, how widespread are negative attitudes and stereotypes among employers; do these attitudes influence behaviour towards older employ- ees; and are employers now sufficiently aware of age discrimination and associated legislation that they are overtly deny these stereotypical attitudes while still pursuing nega- tive behaviours? We also need to consider whether there are other dynamics working the labour force which may be confused with discriminatory attitudes, so that apparent ageist behaviour is in fact a proxy for other forces, and whether these are changing, particularly in the light of age discrimination legislation in different parts of the world. This paper will draw on the results of the global ageing survey on the Future of Retirement to address the first two questions: how widespread are negative attitudes and stereo- types among employers, and do these attitudes influence behaviour towards older employees. Employers’ attitudes and behaviours As an extensive review pointed out, redundancy and fixed retirement ages are frequently based on perceptions of older workers abilities that are stereotypical and may not repre- sent the actual abilities of those workers (Harper and Laslett, AGEING HORIZONS Issue No 5 OXFORD INSTITUTE OF AGEING 31 Copyright 2006 by the Oxford Institute of Ageing AGEING HORIZONS Issue No. 5, 31–41 Attitudes and Practices of Employers towards Ageing Workers: Evidence from a Global Survey on the Future of Retirement Sarah Harper, Hafiz T. A. Khan, Atulya Saxena, and George Leeson, Oxford Institute of Ageing