- The common age of C-suite executives at Fortune 100 firms is 57, in accordance with a brand new research.
- C-suite executives had been getting youthful since 1980, however that is not the case.
- The brand new C-suite is “older, with broader trade expertise and more and more feminine,” wrote Wharton professor Peter Cappelli.
There is a demographic shift occurring amongst right this moment’s prime executives: they’re older, and extra prone to be feminine.
That is in accordance with a brand new research by researchers on the College of Pennsylvania’s Wharton faculty and Madrid’s IE College, printed by the Wall Road Journal on Thursday.
The common age of C-suite executives at Fortune 100 firms is 57, the identical because it was 4 many years in the past. The research checked out C-suite leaders at these firms from 1980 onwards.
“It is a reversal of a protracted development.” wrote Peter Cappelli, one of many research’s authors and a professor at Penn’s Wharton College of Administration. The common age of C-suite executives was trending downwards after 1980, to a median age of 51 in 2001, he added.
The research additionally discovered that C-suite executives at Fortune 100 firms had been extra prone to have jumped throughout industries, and have backgrounds in legislation or finance. They had been additionally extra prone to be ladies, in comparison with ranges seen in 1980. In 2021, 28% of Fortune 100 C-suite leaders had been ladies.
“This is the face of the brand new C-suite: older, with broader trade expertise and more and more feminine,” wrote Cappelli.
Range has lengthy been a problem inside America’s prime boardrooms, with greater than half of board seats at Fortune 500 firms being held by white males in 2022, in accordance with a report by consulting agency Deloitte.
Cappelli’s research discovered that C-suite executives at America’s greatest firms additionally are usually older Gen X-ers — these born between 1965 and 1980.
This age development may also be seen in Fortune 500 firms, the place CEOs had a median age of 57.7 as of June, in accordance with Fortune.
Spencer Stuart’s Board Index for 2023 discovered that the typical age of unbiased administrators in S&P 500 firms was 63. Additional, the proportion of youthful, next-generation administrators — these aged 50 and beneath — appointed to those boards in 2023 declined to 11%, down from 18% final yr.
