It is often highlighted that the largest number of COVID-19-related fatalities is found among the elderly. Although this is true, it is an important omission not to consider the differential trend of infections across age groups as governments devise strategies to flatten both the infections curve and the economic recession curve. We show how these strategies crucially depend on workforce demographics by drawing from the experience of Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. We suggest that restricting the age of essential workers can be a useful policy to mitigate the work-security trade-off while keeping the economy going.