Nowadays it has become popular amongst elderly people to work even after reaching retirement age. There are countries that condone this and do not stand in the way of people who want to work, despite their larger age. Furthermore, in some countries children are also employed without a set minimum required age.
The larger variety in age certainly creates many opportunities for entrepreneurs to save money on workforce. With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence many jobs have become redundant, but new occupations have formed, although they require much less skill. For example, nowadays in a contemporary company there would be a factory based on AI, which would do all the hard work previously done by a qualified workforce, with but one highly qualified engineer to look after the whole system. The children and elderly would follow the instructions of the overseer and pretty much complete the elementary tasks left, like cleaning the machines, thus saving the entrepreneur a lot of money since these workers would be much cheaper to sustain.
On the other hand, a full-time job would surely be detrimental for children and elderly people alike. The reason why most countries have set laws that don’t allow children under 14 to work is because their minds haven’t developed enough to keep up with a full-time job. It is likely they will burn out extremely fast and possibly suffer further mental conditions. In contrast, old people, who might be able to take on the burden mentally, have become fragile in terms of their bodies. Bending one’s back a little too far when lifting a box or turning one’s neck a little too fast when responding to an unfamiliar noise coming from a machine may cause them great harm.
Overall, it is clear that entrepreneurs would be able to spend less money on workers by hiring them from the younger or older spectrum and skipping the largest and most appropriate age group, but in turn the ill fit would cause the employees great mental and physical harm. Therefore, in my opinion, I sincerely believe that the cons here heavily outweigh the pros and thus I conclude that people should not be allowed to work at any age they want to.