The real reason many older workers have taken early retirement

The ‘third age’ between the age of 50 and 70 is the ‘period of your life between middle age and old age, when you are still active,’ says the online Macmillan dictionary. But many are not active enough, according to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee that is looking at why so many over 50s have taken early retirement. Unfilled jobs slow down the economy, damaging growth; make inflation worse and reduces the revenues available to the Exchequer that finance public services, while demand for those services continues to grow. The government is coming up with ways to persuade the early leavers back to work, including a financial MOT that’s presumably, aimed to show them that they can’t afford it, but from what I’ve read so far it seems to be overlooking an important factor that plays a big part in older employees and their motivation.

The chair of the committee, Lord Bridges of Headley, says it’s not clear why so many have chosen to retire early, although ‘one potential explanation is that people experimented with different lifestyles during the pandemic – they were forced to stay at home or work fewer hours – and then changed their working lives as a result, even when the pandemic restrictions changed back.’ Who wouldn’t want to cut out daily commuting, especially in the cold, dark winter months? The report also says ‘most of those over 50 who have left the workforce since the pandemic neither want nor expect to return to work. Furthermore, most appear reasonably well-off. Although this group may yet feel the full impact of the cost of living crisis, it would be unwise to proceed on the basis that a significant proportion of those who have exited the labour force since 2020 will come back, or be persuaded back.’

But there needs to be a deeper dive into the real reason many have retired early. People who don’t feel valued in the workplace are less likely to stay, and it’s widely known that at age 50 most employees experience the ‘glass ceiling’ syndrome, where the corporate culture tells them that their prospects for promotion and sometimes even training have diminished. ‘Older people have a wealth of valuable experience but do not feel their employers recognise it,’ said Victoria Tomlinson, founder and chief executive of Up, an organisation working against prejudice in the workforce. ‘Yet, potentially losing the older workforce is counter-intuitive to the current skills crisis.’

In times past there used to be a well-respected Apprentice Scheme, where older workers mentored younger employees. It was a certified skill that worked well, and brought generations together in a way that helped the younger appreciate the older. Today that mentoring is more likely to be supplied by external specialist companies.

Getting back to work in your 50s is harder than for other age groups. Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, the UK's fastest growing digital community for the over 50s pointed out that highly skilled workers in their 50s and 60s suffer from age discrimination in the recruitment process, often being told they are ‘overqualified’ – a concept that simply doesn’t make sense. Rest Less warned that the workplace was losing mature employees as far back as January 2021, when their analysis of ONS statistics showed that older people out of work were more prone to long-term unemployment than other age groups in the same position. The UK needed more employment and re-employment policies that harnessed the “often overlooked talent” of the over-50s if the country was to recover from the economic fallout of the coronavirus crisis, including tailored support and comprehensive retraining for older people in the early stages of unemployment.

Emily Andrews, senior evidence manager at the Centre for Ageing Better, agreed that the over-50s faced age bias in the recruitment process, and called for more action from the government. ‘Government back-to-work programmes haven’t worked for this age group – just one in five people aged 50-plus gained a job outcome from the work programme, compared to one in three 25 to 49-year-olds and 40 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds.’

Focusing on the over 50s may not be the most effective way of getting them back into work. Perhaps putting more effort into eradicating ageism across the board would produce better results not just for now, but in the future.