Mark Zuckerberg may have founded Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard, and Elon Musk may have founded online Yellow Pages alternative Zip2 at age 24, but the average age of a startup founder veers toward 45. Most founders and CEOs in tech are getting gray around the temples and wrinkles around their eyes—but you couldn’t tell by the demographics they surround themselves with.
High-tech companies are increasingly seeking out younger employees, with the proportion of 25- to 39-year-olds in tech jobs swelling to 40.8%, compared to 33.1% in the overall U.S. workforce, according to a September report from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. Meanwhile, the proportion of tech workers over 40 is declining, from 55.9% in 2014 to 52.1% in 2022, below the national average of 53.1%. From 2014 to 2022, the number of tech workers under 25 grew 9% each year; in contrast, tech workers over 65 saw only a 4% growth in workforce representation during that span.
