UK unemployment total falls (April)

dktreesea

tomterm8 wrote: »

No. When you look at the statistics my conclusion is that the rise in self employment is mainly due to older people (pre and post retirement) who either can't or won't afford to stop work and can't get jobs due to discrimination.

Maybe more likely than trying to evade the trials of dealing with the DWP.

I guess though, with older people, if they have already paid off their mortgages, keeping in mind they may have bought their houses over 20 years ago, and raised their families they can afford just to potter along, building the business at their own pace.

Thrugelmir

dktreesea wrote: »

I guess though, with older people, if they have already paid off their mortgages, keeping in mind they may have bought their houses over 20 years ago, and raised their families they can afford just to potter along, building the business at their own pace.

Also the skills, experience, knowledge and networks to gain traction quickly.

BillJones

dktreesea wrote: »

Still sad, on both counts. If they prefer to work at 65 that suggests they don't like a future without work. That's sad if, even at 65+, being footloose and fancy free doesn't appeal.

You think it's sad that they enjoy their work?

I'd say the opposite, that it's sad that some people end up in jobs that they can't wait to leave as soon as they are able.

Zero_Sum

Generali wrote: »

IIRC, many posters were claiming that reducing the public payroll would result in a catastrophic rise in unemployment. The reality has been that as public sector employment has fallen, private sector employment has risen pretty much every single month by more than enough to soak up the unemployed public former-employees.

Not quite. The North East had the highest % of it's workforce employed in the public sector. This is 2nd or 3rd consecutive rise in unemployment for the NE (despite what's happening nationally)

dktreesea

BillJones wrote: »

You think it's sad that they enjoy their work?

I'd say the opposite, that it's sad that some people end up in jobs that they can't wait to leave as soon as they are able.

But that's a different group of people; people still of working age. In any event, that's a tragedy. But I'm talking about people old enough to no longer need to be part of the working world, who maybe even would like to retire, but are forced to continue working because for whatever reason they don't feel they can live within their means if they retire.

If they can still enjoy their work, what's to say they wouldn't enjoy being retired even more? One of my parents worked well into retirement, and it was physical work. I believe that they knackered their body by working beyond what they were physically capable of doing. It's made their retirement a lot worse, in terms of enjoyment of life, than it needed to be.

It's made me realise, as I get older, that the most important thing moving into retirement is good health, not money.