Please come back

Albermarle

zagfles said:

Maybe they should start looking at why about 7% of working age adults in the UK are on disability benefits, whereas it's around 1% or less in other similar countries.

International comparisons are always a bit tricky, due to different rules, definitions etc
However what is known is that before Covid, 2 million people were registered as long term sick, but now it is 2.5 Million, so effectively 500,000 out of the work force.
Caveats being they are not all over 50, and historically it was often higher than 2 million in some past years.

Albermarle

I suspect more of an issue is that the jobs that need filling are the unpopular badly paid ones - minimum wage, zero hours contracts, provide own vehicle, unsocial hours - retail assistants, waiters, courier drivers.
You can add carers, and some NHS roles to that list as well.

zagfles

Albermarle said:

zagfles said:

Maybe they should start looking at why about 7% of working age adults in the UK are on disability benefits, whereas it's around 1% or less in other similar countries.

International comparisons are always a bit tricky, due to different rules, definitions etc
However what is known is that before Covid, 2 million people were registered as long term sick, but now it is 2.5 Million, so effectively 500,000 out of the work force.
Caveats being they are not all over 50, and historically it was often higher than 2 million in some past years.

They are, but a Scottish govt report a few years ago was careful to compare with countries with similar rules, and that's the sort of discrepancy they found. IIRC it was something like 1% in Sweden, 0.3% in France, and about 7% in the UK. 

Pensions_matter_2

I suspect in some professions employers are reluctant to employ older workers who have been out of the market for over a year. Could be an element of ageism in there too. Im sure a lot of people in their 50s and 60s have experienced that. Employers’ attitude to older workers needs to change I think, but I dont know how that can be achieved. May be the government need to incentivise employers to take on more older workers on more flexible bases.

Troxy

I’m interested to know what the incentives to carry on working would be if you have enough resources that you don’t have to. I’m one of the people who will be jacking it in in my early 50s. This will free me up from office politics, deadlines and give me time to pursue things I want to do.
The tax burden and pension tax relief has “encouraged” me to save a good amount, especially in Scotland where there is a marginal rate of 54% soon for a not massive income. I can’t see that changing anytime soon and I’m sure that is a major consideration for many.

Silvertabby

molerat said:

Out of work / low hours benefits being cut is what needs to happen. The biggest motivator is money so giving people a choice of where that money comes from is the biggest de-motivator against getting people in to work. 

I retired at 55 and had loads of offers to go back to work.  I didn't need the extra money and didn't want the hassle from upper management and the government taking 32% of every penny I earned and I suspect the majority of this target audience are the same.

From another angle, after I retired (at 60) my old boss asked me to return too.  However, in this case, the youngsters who applied for my job failed the maths/english test part of the interview.  The job eventually went to a 40 something year old who had previously worked for another LGPS 

marycanary

molerat said:

Out of work / low hours benefits being cut is what needs to happen. The biggest motivator is money so giving people a choice of where that money comes from is the biggest de-motivator against getting people in to work. 

How long do you think the queues at food banks and warm areas need to be to force the idle poor to work more?

daz378

Don't think it's going to work, but if it does...many over 50s provide informal care services   for either grandchildren or elderly parents...May not plug the gap   they think it will

molerat

marycanary said:

molerat said:

Out of work / low hours benefits being cut is what needs to happen. The biggest motivator is money so giving people a choice of where that money comes from is the biggest de-motivator against getting people in to work. 

How long do you think the queues at food banks and warm areas need to be to force the idle poor to work more?

In my last job we worked with job centre and a charity to give guaranteed interviews or job trials to long term unemployed.  The majority did not want to work or were unemployable due to their attitude to work, they only did it as it was mandatory for them to be on these schemes and it kept the gravy train rolling.

zagfles

I've just read the underlying report https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5803/ldselect/ldeconaf/115/115.pdf

It looks like another report where the underlying narrative doesn't match the data. And certainly not the BBC narrative.

Just look at figure 5 which shows the increase in economic inactivity since the pandemic by reason. By far the two most significant reasons are increases in long term sickness and students. Retirement hardly registers. 

Figure 14 is interesting. It shows a steady decline in the proportion of over 50's retired, from over 13% in 2013, to just over 10% at the start of the pandemic, to 11% now. So less than 1% rise since the start of the pandemic, but over 2% drop over the last decade.

They make a bit deal about the "flows" from employment to inactivity being more caused by retirement and less by sickness, ie the extra half a million "long term sick" since 2019 (coincidently not far off the increase in ecomomic inactivity since the pandemic of 565,000) don't matter because they generally weren't economically active in the first place. But they obviously might have moved eg from being a student, or a SAH parent, or carer, into employment.

Obviously the "flow" from work to retirement will be significant amongst 50-64 year olds. Anyone who retires before 65 will be part of that flow. But the real problem seems to be there's a lack of the normal flow into economic activity at the other end of the age range.

Look at Figure 6, which splits the increase by age group. They claim "As Figure 6 shows, of the 565,000 increase in inactivity since the pandemic began, most is accounted for by the 50–64-years-old age-group. Therefore, much of our evidence focused on the older working-age population."

But just look at fig 6. Age 16-24 (inclusive) is 9 years, age 50-64 is 15 years, so clearly a much larger cohort, yet there's not such a great difference in their contributions to the increase. Yet the report makes no bones about targetting the 50-64 age group rather than the 16-24 age group, where the problem appears to be bigger!