The Role for Paid Employment for Women and Men in their 50s and 60s in the UK Around the Millenium and Beyond*

In this paper I examine recent trends in the employment of older men and women. I also forecast likely future scenarios given different assumptions. The analysis concentrates on the UK, but international comparisons and contrasts are noted. More than half the population of women aged 50-59 years in the UK are currently employees or self-employed. With each successive cohort a larger proportion re-enter paid work, but they are remaining attached to the labour force for shorter periods. The overall employment-population rates for this age group and those in their 60's has therefore been roughly constant for several decades. For men aged 55-64 years full-time employment was the norm in the UK throughout the 20th Century until the late 1970s. A sharp recession in the early 1980s altered this and it is now a 5:50 chance whether a 60 year old man will have a job. Despite a second long recession in the early 1990s the relative position for this age group has not worsened again to the same extent and slight increases in the employment-population ratios for some older age groups can be detected. In this paper I therefore examine whether the shake out of older males in recent decades may in the long run show up as a more temporary phenomenon. This paper is about older workers and their transition from paid employment to retirement, buth is should not be thought of as concerning a special group or merely the current cohort. We may all be in this position one day. Some of us are there now, but most of the rest of us will come up to it soon. Therefore we should not view the transitions as simply affecting someone else. The consequences of the policies that lead to what we observe now are what we will inherent when our turn comes. We need, therefore, to think of sensible policies for second agers as well as those about to retire if we are to make a lasting impression on the areas of concern. It is on this wider context of present and future patterns of retirement that I concentrate in this paper.