Older workers - how many? What do they do?

As usual I will start by my thanks to the ONS for their excellent videos that now accompany many of their reports. Brilliant innovation.

This ONS release is about the numbers and fate of older workers.

The number of older workers, defined here as those working beyond State Pension Age (SPA), has almost doubled from 753,000 (1993) to 1.4 million in 2011.  No doubt this will get the intergenerational hawks going on about the way they are denying jobs to the young and all of that other clap trap.

Of the 1.4 million older workers above SPA in the UK in the final quarter of 2011 around 39% were men and 61% women. 


Now this is the interesting thing.  Around two-thirds of men above SPA work in jobs classed as higher skilled but almost two thirds of women above SPA work in jobs classed as lower skilled. 


You might be asking  - so what is higher and lower skills?

Of all the jobs carried out by men, the two most common were farmers and taxi drivers. Looking at women, the most common job was cleaners, followed by administration assistants, care workers and retail assistants.

If you are interested in what the older age group are doing instead of retiring then have a read. Dick Stroud