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It’s a phenomenon right across the developed world – people carrying on working beyond the usual retirement age. Here in the UK, 11.5 per cent of people over 65 are in work, a proportion that has doubled since 2000. That’s 1.43 million people. But that is still low compared to some other countries. In the US it’s nearly 20 per cent of over 65s still working. In Japan, a country with the highest proportion of elderly people in the world, it is some 25 per cent. That is 9.1 million still working, a number that has been rising for more than 20 years.
It looks inevitable that we will continue along the same path, with more and more of us either carrying on working beyond retirement age, which in any case is going up, or going back into jobs after we have formally retired. How should we do this well – or at least put ourselves into a position where, if we do have to go back into work, we are able to find a satisfying way of doing so?
We are all different in our skills, temperament, family circumstances. We are different, too, in the reasons why we might want to carry on working. For some it is money. Many people through bad planning or bad luck find they cannot manage on the income they have or hoped to have in retirement. Governments change their policies on taxes, pensions and the retirement age. Private pensions may fall short of expectations, and anyone who relied on property to provide top-up funds may find they are sitting a loss rather than a profit. One in five flats in the UK were sold at a loss last year.
For others, the driving force is the need for structure and a sense of purpose: the discipline that work creates of going to a place at a regular time, the status that it provides, and the sense of usefulness.
But we all feel good about doing something purposeful and to get paid is practical evidence that someone – employer, customers, whoever – does find it useful.
And then there is the social impact of it all. An eight-hour working day is half one’s waking hours. Work colleagues can become close and trusted friends. But all that goes with retirement. You can stay in touch with former colleagues but the relationship is not the same. For many retirees this is perhaps the biggest loss of all, the missing element often being the interaction with younger people.
So the first thing to do is to work out why you want to unretire. Is it for a reason related to money, structure or sociability? Or some combination of all three? If you don’t need to be paid, everything is much easier, because there are a host of voluntary jobs that need people with skills.
The demand for the services provided by many charities, voluntary groups, community organisations and so on has risen just at a time when public funding for them is under pressure. There is nothing wrong with paid work, but many people find at the later stage of life that working for a not-for-profit can give purpose and satisfaction, as well sometimes a sense of frustration.
If on the other hand you need the money, the golden rule is to have some idea of what you might do while still working. We all know that it is vastly easier to get a job if you already have one. While the details of what you might do will vary, the principle that you set up possible retirement activities while you are still in active employment holds true. You still have the contacts. It may well be to carry on working for a current employer part-time if the relationship is good. Or if it is bad, going to a competitor and offering one’s services to them.
The point here is that it is much easier to reduce one’s working hours gradually, rather than stop altogether and then have to restart. Put bluntly, better to part-retire than retire completely and drop out of the workforce, and then have to find some way of getting back in.
But for people who do, for whatever reason, need to abandon their retirement plans and find work, all is not lost. The Government wants people to do so, as it is very much in its self-interest to boost the number of older workers to take pressure off its own fiscal difficulties. There are many charitable organisations that can help older people who are looking for work – Age UK a good place to start. Others include Independent Age, Brave Starts, Wise Age, and many more.
So anyone looking to be an unretiree is pushing at a door that is starting to swing open. It is really important, not only for older workers but for society as a whole that it should do so.
Need to know
There’s a danger for journalists, including this one, to think about post-retirement jobs from the perspective of a writer. That is because writing is one of the activities that people can carry on doing at any age, whereas a job that requires physical activity probably isn’t suitable for older people.
Politicians seem to go on and on, and a few entertainers do too. The Rolling Stones are apparently back with some new music, with an album to be released in July. But in business it’s rare. It’s true that Warren Buffett, the legendary US investor, has just stepped down at the age of 95, but that is unusual. For most people, things do quieten down as they move through their 70s. Even judges have to retire at 75.
So it’s important for writers not to think of every else being in a similar position, or indeed that they would want to be. But there are technical changes that have made it possible for people doing desk work to carry on. The communications revolution means that we can work from home on a computer as seamlessly as if we were in an office. The structure of the labour market has changed in ways that help older people. Gig working has grown massively, while security of employment has disappeared.
The huge question now is whether artificial intelligence will help push the labour market towards older workers vis-à-vis younger ones. It seems to be destroying entry-level jobs, though it is really too early to be sure about this. But as far as one can see it does not seem to be undermining the opportunities at the other end of the age range. If anything, it may actually boost the need for experienced workers who can use their judgement and experience to test whether the output from AI models is correct. (A personal note: some of my writings have been used to train Anthropic models and I am waiting for payment for their use.)
What I am sure about is that the proportion of older people in the workforce will continue to climb. That is good news for society, as well as for the oldies who keep at it.
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