Forget quitting at 65 – everyone is going to have to stay on for longer, but we should exploit older people's experience
As people live longer – life expectancy at birth has increased globally by six years since 1990, according to the World Health Organisation – they are expected to work longer. This pressure comes from governments, which struggle to afford pensions for a longer-living population, and also from individuals themselves, who find it harder to make their retirement savings stretch as the average life expectancy, which is currently above 81 in the UK, rises.
These trends have led to speculation that we are approaching the end of retirement or at least entering a period in which older workers will stop working gradually rather than abruptly upon reaching retirement age, which currently stands at 65 for men and 62 for women in the UK but will rise to 67 for both by 2028.
For many older workers, however, remaining in employment beyond 65 is an unsettling prospect. "A certain type of older worker with sought-after skills can manage transitions from one job to another easily enough," says Matt Flynn, the director of the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce at Newcastle University Business School. "For them, a cliff-edge approach to retirement is probably going to be a thing of the past."
"But," he adds, "for a lot of people, not only those in low-skill, physically demanding jobs, but also those who don't have that much experience making job transitions, they are going to feel a real sense of loss in job security and economic security if that cliff-edge approach is taken away. Even if it's on a more phased retirement basis, having to work longer than you planned can be quite scary."
Even for workers some way shy of retirement age, holding on to your job isn't always easy. According to one UK survey, redundancy rates by age group in 2011 rose steeply from 5% for under-30s, to 26% for the 45-49 age group, to 37% for those over 50. Even though legislation such as the Equality Act in the UK aims to prevent employers from discriminating on the basis of age, the odds are often stacked against older people applying for jobs. "Sometimes, when an employer has a choice between two candidates, one with up-to-date skills and another with experience and a qualification from 40 years ago, there might be some logic for a risk-averse employer to choose the first candidate," says Flynn. "But it might also be because employers assume that younger people are more adaptable, cheaper, more tech-savvy and are going to stay with the organisation longer."
Flynn believes it's unfair to assume that older workers are less adaptable. "One of the big reasons why people aren't able to make very effective transitions from one job to another is that their skills aren't up to date and a major contributor to that is not having the opportunity to train." Individuals have to take ownership of their careers, he says, but there is also an onus on the government and employers to provide work programmes and apprenticeships to maintain a skilled older workforce.
He gives the example of the Silver Human Resource Centre in Japan, which provides part-time, paid employment for people over 60; government investment in older workers that has yielded positive results. "This idea could easily be applied to a UK or US context and given a modest investment by government, making better use of skills and knowledge of older workers, could benefit the entire economy."
His assertion is backed up by a 2014 report from the International Longevity Centre-UK thinktank, which estimated that, assuming continued high migration, Britain's GDP could increase by 12% by 2037 if the number of people over 65 in work continued to rise. Perhaps it's time we started taking the senior members of our workforce more seriously, whatever their qualifications.
The views expressed are individual and not necessarily MTC Global also share the same views.
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