Please come back

coastline

Governments around the world have known about this for two years. History tells us that after every crisis, in this case covid, there's a shortage of labour. On top of that there's always been shock inflation and commodity prices going to the moon for a few years after the event. All these articles are more than a year old.

History Repeats: Pandemic, Labor Shortage, and The Great Resignation (the-future-of-commerce.com)

Global shortage of workers: What's going on? Experts explain (cnbc.com)

So no blaming brexit then and I'm sure millions would like to ?

The pandemic aggravated labour shortages in some sectors; the problem (europa.eu)

2021 figures show 2.75 million at university and a similar figure over 16 yo at school so there's enough young people to fill vacancies. Not saying young people shouldn't be given the chance to better themselves with further education . Good luck to all of them. The government and business should get together to create an environment where young people could work and also gain qualifications at the same time. Not everyone needs uni surely. After all we have a crisis.

Nebulous2

The broadbrush approach of looking at the big picture hides all the complicated detail of how people actually lead their lives. 

I've said before, an elderly relative has 3 homecarers who are in their 70s, one late 70s. Her newspaper boy is also late 70s, and delivers groceries, shopping as well as papers. 

I had enough last year at 59, did my sums found I could and decided to leave. Very quickly I decided I wasn't ready to retire and took a part-time job in the NHS. We had a lot of people on temporary registrations who came and joined us to help out during the pandemic. They generally really enjoyed it, did 6 hour shifts and offered a great deal of experience and commitment to the team. 

Retirement to me now feels like a process, rather than an event.

My 1-2 days a week gives me money I possibly don't need, although with my assets static due to the state of the stock market I'm reluctant to dig into them. I know this is going to be the tightest period until state pensions kick in, and I can afford it, but decumulation doesn't feel right.

More importantly however I found the adjustment from full-time work to not working more complicated than I expected. 

This is a slightly older BBC article, but it covers the reality I have known better than some of the drumbeat stuff we are seeing about horrible people in their 50s causing a recession..... 

Is this the end of retirement as we know it? - BBC Worklife

Albermarle

zagfles said:

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!

Thanks for the link. Very interesting, although raises as many questions as it answers.

One interesting point is that despite oft repeated negative comments about UK populations attitude to work. It said this.

The UK stands out among developed economies in having a growing inactivity rate and not reverting to its pre-pandemic trend. The recent increase in inactivity is also significant because it breaks from the historic trend of falling inactivity in the UK.

I found this chart which shows that the % of economically inactive 16-64 year old people is relatively low in the UK by European standards. Although it has increased recently which is what everybody is talking about.
Inactive population in Europe by country 2021 | Statista

Also we come very low in the tables when it comes to having days off sick. Having worked with European colleagues for many years, this does not surprise me. A bad cold often means a few days off, and at least a couple of trips to the Doctor.
Sick Leave: How Does the UK Compare to the Rest of Europe? Mitrefinch

RetSol

I had a mid-life MOT and the engineer's report is what made me stop work in the first place... 

zagfles

Albermarle said:

zagfles said:

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!

Thanks for the link. Very interesting, although raises as many questions as it answers.

One interesting point is that despite oft repeated negative comments about UK populations attitude to work. It said this.

The UK stands out among developed economies in having a growing inactivity rate and not reverting to its pre-pandemic trend. The recent increase in inactivity is also significant because it breaks from the historic trend of falling inactivity in the UK.

I found this chart which shows that the % of economically inactive 16-64 year old people is relatively low in the UK by European standards. Although it has increased recently which is what everybody is talking about.
Inactive population in Europe by country 2021 | Statista

It would be interesting to see a breakdown by gender - I suspect the main reason why other countries have a much higher working age inactivity rate is that they are more "traditional" in that women are less likely to be in paid employment and more likely to be a SAHM/housewife.

If you've ever been to Turkey on holiday you'll have almost certainly noticed that virtually all waiters, bar staff, hotel receptionists etc are male. In fact thinking about it - it was similar in Montenegro. Even in Italy, I think there's significantly more men doing those sorts of jobs than women, compared to the UK.

This could be a combination of a more "traditional" society, perhaps also less subsidies for childcare, or a tax system that doesn't penalise single earner families like it does here.

ETA: Stats which appear to prove my speculation right here:

https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=103872

Labour force participation by sex in 2021 for the top 3 OECD countries in the highest inactivity list (Montenegro not an OECD country)

In Turkey: 70.3% men, 32.8% women

In Italy, 57.6% men, 40.1% women

In Greece, 58.6% men, 43.6% women

Whereas:

In UK, 66.9% men, 58.6% women

hugheskevi

When I've engaged with individuals to discuss their future plans, I've been struck by how important 'pushes' are to decisions to leave the workplace. For example, an individual reaching their Lifetime Allowance might be notified by their pension provider, wonder what it means, investigate it, and in the process think that actually retiring or working less would be quite attractive - this is quite separate from their Lifetime Allowance issue, but the Lifetime Allowance was a prompt to start thinking about other things. Hence, even though financially they would still be far better off working than retiring even with LTA issues, they might decide to retire anyway.

There are quite a few structural things the Govt could address:

• Marginal deduction rates in income tax - it makes no sense to have a marginal rate of 60% (Personal Allowance withdrawal) at £100,000 of income, and gives a strong incentive to only work to that level
• The policy of abatement in public service pensions - workers literally have to work for nothing for significant portions of the week if they want to continue working full-time past age 60 in many cases
• The Lifetime and Annnual Allowance issues
• The very generous pension tax relief arrangements available at age 55 due to pension flexibilities - this provides very strong incentives to save on income tax and national insurance and also get employer contributions and maybe higher benefit payments prior to age 55, and then withdraw the saved money with only income tax to pay after age 55. Once someone is aged around 50 pension saving offers huge incentives with little discincentive from access restrictions
• Child Benefit withdrawal at £50,000 - and the way it was implemented at individual rather than household level
• Higher rate tax being a big jump from 20% to 40% rather than a more gradual phased increase - having such a stark jump gives clear incentives to consider not earning more than that
• National Insurance giving incentives to put as much income into a single pay period as possible, encouraging things like lumpy salary sacrifice
• The lack of any State Pension accrual once full qualification is reached, which for many will be in their 50s - I'm always struck by the importance people place on full State Pension qualification, even though voluntary contributions would cost very little, yet this can drive retirement decisions nonetheless.

To be clear, I'm not saying all the above are wrong or should be changed, but they are things which could be considered.

Improving systems to get rid of the silly marginal deduction hikes and crude means-testing introduced over time so that workers don't have incentives to stop earning at arbitrary thresholds would be a small but useful improvement to make systems work better.

horsewithnoname

eastcorkram said:

So, according to the news, the government want early retirees to come back to work.
Looking forward to loads of you on here, going back to 12 hour night shifts!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64083802

Very much depends on the job, I’m partly retired and doing 3 days a week sat at a computer is ok. If I was a labourer working outdoors in a manual job, not so much, arthritis wouldn’t allow it. 

Stupid idea, but typical. 

Kim1965

horsewithnoname said:

eastcorkram said:

So, according to the news, the government want early retirees to come back to work.
Looking forward to loads of you on here, going back to 12 hour night shifts!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64083802

Very much depends on the job, I’m partly retired and doing 3 days a week sat at a computer is ok. If I was a labourer working outdoors in a manual job, not so much, arthritis wouldn’t allow it. 

Stupid idea, but typical. 

Absolutely, im 58 soon and would love to be economically in active. 
 A phased retirement for me to gradually do less as my job is physical.
 Two bulging discs arthritic right hip and back. Sciatica. The last time i saw the doctor ( to get better pain relief to enable mě to work) he suggest ed i should give up my line of work. Its tempting to throw a sicky, perhaps apply for contribution esa, have a go at getting pip. If i structure my finances and drew from isas, work part time i think it would get mě closer to retirement. It seems so many people are at it, is the uk really a nation of disabled people? 
 In reality i will continue for a bit longer,semi retire and work part time doing something less physical ly taxing. 
 
 

zagfles

hugheskevi said:

When I've engaged with individuals to discuss their future plans, I've been struck by how important 'pushes' are to decisions to leave the workplace. For example, an individual reaching their Lifetime Allowance might be notified by their pension provider, wonder what it means, investigate it, and in the process think that actually retiring or working less would be quite attractive - this is quite separate from their Lifetime Allowance issue, but the Lifetime Allowance was a prompt to start thinking about other things. Hence, even though financially they would still be far better off working than retiring even with LTA issues, they might decide to retire anyway.

There are quite a few structural things the Govt could address:

• Marginal deduction rates in income tax - it makes no sense to have a marginal rate of 60% (Personal Allowance withdrawal) at £100,000 of income, and gives a strong incentive to only work to that level
• The policy of abatement in public service pensions - workers literally have to work for nothing for significant portions of the week if they want to continue working full-time past age 60 in many cases
• The Lifetime and Annnual Allowance issues
• The very generous pension tax relief arrangements available at age 55 due to pension flexibilities - this provides very strong incentives to save on income tax and national insurance and also get employer contributions and maybe higher benefit payments prior to age 55, and then withdraw the saved money with only income tax to pay after age 55. Once someone is aged around 50 pension saving offers huge incentives with little discincentive from access restrictions
• Child Benefit withdrawal at £50,000 - and the way it was implemented at individual rather than household level
• Higher rate tax being a big jump from 20% to 40% rather than a more gradual phased increase - having such a stark jump gives clear incentives to consider not earning more than that
• National Insurance giving incentives to put as much income into a single pay period as possible, encouraging things like lumpy salary sacrifice
• The lack of any State Pension accrual once full qualification is reached, which for many will be in their 50s - I'm always struck by the importance people place on full State Pension qualification, even though voluntary contributions would cost very little, yet this can drive retirement decisions nonetheless.

To be clear, I'm not saying all the above are wrong or should be changed, but they are things which could be considered.

Improving systems to get rid of the silly marginal deduction hikes and crude means-testing introduced over time so that workers don't have incentives to stop earning at arbitrary thresholds would be a small but useful improvement to make systems work better.

While all the above are relevant in some areas, by far the main labour shortages are in low paid employment sectors rather than sectors where people are likely to be troubled by the LTA, personal allowance withdrawal, or even higher rate tax.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/how-has-the-pandemic-affected-industries-and-labour-in-the-uk/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/15/pounds-60m-in-uk-crops-left-to-rot-lack-of-workers-nfu-farming

barnstar2077

My work culture is toxic.  Performance management, having to account for every second of the day, and if you should be unlucky enough to be off sick, even if you have broken bones, then you are treated the same as if you had just rung up and said you had a headache or a runny nose.  Some jobs may be great, but I suspect that for a vast majority of people that their terms and conditions are slowly being eroded over time.  The way people are treated these days feels like we are going backwards towards the Victorian era.  Who would want to come back?