I usually like @jennirsl's writing, but this is a poorly researched and badly thought out piece. IFS research into the early 80s job release scheme showed that pensioning off older workers did not reduce youth unemployment. https://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp1002.pdf 
s https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/early-pension-would-free-up-jobs-for-the-young-3h3m35mlx

the jobs that are disappearing in this crisis are not the skilled service jobs done by experienced older people, they are the unskilled jobs mostly done by young people that have proliferated in the last decade. Baristas are disappearing. Care workers are not.

I remember trying to find a job after leaving uni in 1982. I applied for hundreds, but was constantly rejected because I was too young. Nowadays employers can't explicitly say "you're too young", so they say "you don't have enough experience" instead. But's still the same.

Giving early state pensions to experienced older employees doesn't encourage employers to take on inexperienced young people. It just gives employers an excuse to downsize.

(that's the finding of the IFS's research, btw)

If you want employers to take on inexperienced young people you need to give them real incentives to do so, such as paying those young people's wages and providing training allowances.

Furthermore, it is all very well saying "no older person should be pushed out of a job", but that is in fact what happens. For example the early 2010s civil service cuts disproportionately affected older women.

Employers who want to downsize "lean on" people they think might not be too attached to their jobs. Giving older people early state pensions could also create a social expectation that that they should take early retirement "to help young people" even if they want to work.

Work is hugely important for wellbeing, identity, social position, as Russell herself says in this paragraph. So why throw older people on the scrap heap long before they are too old and frail to work? Wellbeing, identity and social position, matter for over-50s too.

The coronavirus is not going to change our attitude to work. Work is central to our society and will remain so. The question is how to ensure there is enough work, and meaningful well-designed work, to enable everyone to participate in it.

The cost of paying men and women state pensions from 60 has been estimated by the DWP as over £200bn. Surely this money would be better spent on guaranteeing jobs for young people, including employing them directly on public works, than on paying older people not to work?