In the past people would often work in their businesses until they died or were no longer able to continue, whereas today most industries have set a definite retirement age for their employees. I think replacing elderly staff with young recruits is a wise practice.
First and foremost, a large majority of workers lose their strength as they become older. This is mainly because the human body has limits, and working for a long time, say, 30 or 35 years, can affect it negatively. For example, young industrial workers tend to work for five to six hours before they take breaks while older ones usually need to rest every one or two hours. This means that productivity levels would certainly decline.
Furthermore, new employment opportunities for young people are very limited. Most companies do not offer more than a few new jobs every year and try not to increase their staff members dramatically to keep expenses low. Consequently, they should definitely lay off some of the older personnel to make room for younger ones, especially those around 20 to 30 years old who are about to form families and support them.
Some may argue that removing older workers from the workplace will deprive younger workers of what they can teach them in terms of experience and skills. However, I think the old workers’ experience is usually out of date and is of little use to new recruits who need to learn how to employ modern technologies such as computers and lasers.
In conclusion, I think companies need to force their elderly workforce to retire and employ younger workers to replace them to improve productivity, have up-to-date workers and provide jobs for young people.