I did the subtraction at the kitchen table last week, which is a risky hobby at my age. Eighty is sixteen years off for me.
For the oldest boomers it arrived on New Year’s Day.
The first members of the cohort, born in 1946, started turning 80 on January 1. There were cakes and a few photographs of famous people blowing out candles.
The figure that matters came from a demographer at Brookings. The country’s 80-plus population is projected to double in twenty years.
29.4M
Americans aged 80 and older, projected for 2045
14.7M
Americans aged 80 and older in 2025
Twenty years, twice the count. Every one of the added names is already alive and already on the calendar.
Most coverage stopped at the headcount. The shift worth watching sits inside the over-60 group itself.
Today about 17 percent of Americans over 60 are over 80. By 2045 that share is projected at 29 percent. Nearly three in ten.
So the senior customer is getting older faster than the senior market is getting bigger. That changes what this cohort buys, and who gets paid for it.
Where the cohort’s money sits, and where eighty moves it.
A 70-year-old and an 85-year-old shop very differently. The younger one buys a trip or a new kitchen. The older one buys help.
Mostly help at home, sold by the hour. A ride to appointments. Someone to cook. Someone there at night.
That kind of service grows one person at a time. Every added hour needs an aide to fill it, and the calendar is adding customers faster than agencies can hire.
The squeeze runs both ways. Most families pay for that help from their own savings, and the hours stop when the money does.
And aides are hard to hire and harder to keep. The same shortage that fills the waiting list caps how much of it an agency can serve.
The arithmetic
The 80-plus population projections, 14.7 million in 2025 and 29.4 million in 2045, and the 80-plus share of the 60-plus population, 17% in 2025 and 29% in 2045, are from William H. Frey, “Baby boomers are turning 80,” Brookings Institution, 2026, based on U.S. Census Bureau projections. The first boomers, born in 1946, began turning 80 on January 1, 2026. Pew Research Center estimated about 67 million boomers as of July 1, 2024. The reads on how spending shifts toward hourly help after 80, and on agencies hiring slower than demand grows, are Boomers Trade’s own.
I have sixteen years to go. The front of the wave is there now. Keep an eye on the share of the over-60 group that is over 80. As it climbs toward three in ten, help by the hour becomes one of the biggest things this cohort buys.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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