Why work when you can play?

henry tapper

4 years ago

This blog is one for everyone who is 50 or older and beginning to see work as a toad!

“My income now is a third of when I was working, but I’m not spending a fortune on going to work. I’m spending much less on clothes, petrol, meals . . . I’ve gone back to basics, real basics. Without Covid, I would still be working.”

That’s Caroline speaking to the FT (second name withheld)

She’s one of 250,000 older worker’s the FT’s identified as leaving the workforce since the pandemic started.

Others think the number is considerably higher.

And with 1.1 million fewer in the labour market than pre-crisis trends, 630k fewer older people, and huge growth in worklessness due to ill health, the Plan for Jobs needs to be a Plan for Participation: working locally and x-public services to help those further from work too 4/ pic.twitter.com/kkzyEMPVVX

— Tony Wilson (@tonywilsonIES) January 26, 2022

The IES calculate that employment remains 600 thousand below pre-pandemic levels while economic inactivity is 400 thousand higher.

This growth in inactivity is increasingly being driven by higher worklessness due to ill health, which is up around 200 thousand in the last six months (and by 230 thousand
since the pandemic began).

It is also rising for young people outside full time education, and falls in labour force participation have been particularly large for older people.

In all there are now 1.1 million fewer people in the labour force than we would have expected to see based on pre-crisis trends, and older people account for three fifths of this ‘participation gap’.

The FT like Tony Wilson illustrate this graphically

Those, like Caroline, declaring themselves “retired” are relatively small

So is there a problem with older people not working?

There are clearly societal problems with older workers leaving the workforce. We saw it with the fuel distribution crisis before Christmas and we see it in the “vacancies” advertised in so many places as we travel about. There is not a labour shortage, but a participation shortage as many older people, like Caroline, choose not to work.

But – and this seems odder – there are also reports of some older workers wanting to work but finding they are not wanted for ageist reasons. Is it reasonable to expect a 55 year old accountant to work in a warehouse? Is it good business hiring fresh graduates with no experience but higher tech-skills?

There is a school of thought that the onus is on employers to reshape work around the people available. The labour market is providing what has always been there, but the workforce is older. Is it time for employers to have a rethink about how they parcel jobs up or is the onus on older workers to retrain and skill up?

Replacing income (but at what cost?)..

But where people have access to funds from personal and occupational pension pots that they can draw down as they like from 55, there is a worry that what is happening is that people are doing little more with their savings than bridging to the arrival of the state pension (itself a problematic area).

In absenting themselves, not just from the workforce, but from registering as unemployed, many older people will be missing out on credits towards their state pension (as well as any increases to workplace schemes).

Retiring or revaluating?

It’s not just Government that is pondering the retirement age. It is a question on the mind of millions of people in their fifties and sixties for whom issues such as “work” are increasingly blurred by their being no “workplace” or traditional work contract. Older people have to contend with zero hours and short-term contracts.

One of my friends described his career “spluttering to a close” and described it as “running out of petrol”. It was hard to know whether he was referring to the work itself of his motivation to do it.