In January 2023, the then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave a wide-ranging interview to a newspaper about his vision for the British economy and his plan for growth. He discussed everything from tax policy to defence spending, inflation to education. But it was one particular remark that grabbed editors’ attention. The headline read: “Hunt: Over-50s need to get off the golf course”.
He was right to be concerned about the three million people who are over 50 but under the state pension age and not currently in work. In a country battling to turn around long-term low economic growth, the Treasury needs all the productive workers and taxpayers it can get. The government, Hunt argued, must make clear to this demographic that “your country needs you”. He went on: “This is a time when you can… have an enormously rich life by continuing to make a contribution to the economy. It doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course.”
But while it’s true that within those three million potentially lost workers, there are undoubtedly some people who have retired early with generous pensions and paid-off mortgages – and some of them might like golf – it’s also true that for every happy early retiree, there are other people of the same age who do still want to work but are facing barriers to getting hired.
This is a serious problem for the UK’s economic growth. As a result of our ageing population, people aged between 50 and 64 now account for one in three of the working-age population. According to recent estimates, raising employment among 50 to 64-year-olds by just one percentage point could inject £5.7bn into the UK’s GDP each year, while adding £800m to the public purse through increased tax revenues.
It also matters for individuals’ own financial security, by enabling them to continue to earn and save, reducing their need to draw down on their pension savings too early or turn to the benefits system for support. The group of working-age adults with the greatest increase in rates of poverty in recent years is people aged 60-65; those in that group who have fallen out of work but still have years left before they can access their state pensions are most likely to fall below the poverty line.
So what can be done? The evidence points to at least four big opportunities to address this: better support for people with health conditions and disabilities to remain in work; increasing the numbers of flexible and good quality part-time roles; widening access to adult careers guidance and employment support to help people find the right work for them, and tackling the insidious presence of ageism in recruitment and in our workplaces.
The first of these points was the focus of a recent government report, Keep Britain Working, published following an independent review of employment sector challenges. The report welcomes examples of “vanguard” actions by leading employers keen to reduce their sickness absence, and builds a body of practical evidence for how to improve workplace health support that other employers can learn from.
The second area for action – good quality part-time and flexible work – is not unrelated, and is something the review also highlights as important. Whether it’s to help manage changes
in health, make time to care for a loved one, or just out of a desire to reduce the intensity of work without stopping it altogether, people in their fifties and sixties regularly cite a lack of access to good part-time and flexible roles as a major barrier to staying in work.
It seems unlikely that we will see a step change in over-50s employment until more employers embrace reality: not all the talented workers they need can work our now century-old definition of full-time hours. Managers must have the job design skills to adapt more roles to different working patterns.
The third opportunity is to widen access to careers guidance. The quality of careers guidance on offer in schools and colleges has come a long way from that which people currently in their fifties and sixties might remember from their own school days. But while there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of adult careers guidance, this has received much less policy attention. In an era of rapid technological and economic change, we need to make it easier for adults of all ages to access the guidance that could help them actively manage their careers. A 50-year-old today could still have 15 to 20 years left in the workforce; we must ensure that work remains fulfilling and sustainable for them throughout that time.
The government recognises the benefits of improving careers guidance in its ambitions to reform the welfare and employment system. It is doing this by creating a new National Jobs and Careers Service, bringing together the currently separate functions of the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus. While this policy remains in its early stages, it ultimately has great potential to improve adult career guidance delivery by rebranding and extending the reach of the government-funded offer.
Finally, there is the issue of ageism. More than one in three over-50s feel they have experienced it in applying for roles. And with recruitment processes increasingly being automated and delegated to AI, workers in their fifties and sixties are increasingly reporting suspicions that they are being sifted out on the grounds of age. This would be illegal under the Equality Act and warrants further investigation.
As the state pension age begins to increase from 66 to 67 from next April, we urgently need to take evidence-based, strategic and coordinated action to make it realistic for more people to stay in work up until that age. The country needs the workers, and the people need the work.
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