Employment and older people

Many older people have been affected by the recession and financial crises not only in terms of the reduced income from savings accounts and shares, but also because of losing jobs or having their hours cut. For example, in our research, one of our participants worked as a domestic carer for a range of people (as she put it, aged from 4 to 104) and had found that because her clients had to pay themselves (even though the care was organised through social services) they were having to cut down on the hours they could afford to pay her for.

On Monday 25th Jan I attended the launch of 'Working better: the over 50s - the new work generation' which was held at Tate Modern by the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission). It is undoubtedly true that even beyond the present recession, most older people are going to have to continue working for longer than in the past, mainly in order to generate enough income to fund their eventual retirements.

However, it appears that despite the best efforts of the EHRC and the various bodies such as Age Concern, TAEN (The Age and Employment Network) and the EFA (Employers' Forum on Age), there are still many influential people who hold that older workers should somehow 'give up' their jobs for the benefit of younger ones.

We are all sympathetic to the plight of younger people who are finding it hard at present to get their foot on the career ladder. Indeed I have 2 children myself who are in this position. However, many economists think it is a myth that if one group of the population are cut out of the workforce, jobs for others automatically become available (this is known as the 'lump of labour' fallacy). Instead, it seems likely that as an economy becomes more prosperous, jobs increase for all population groups.

But there is a danger that the idea that younger people should be favoured versus older ones, could be used to justify the continuation of the use of forced early retirement, and other forms of age discrimination in the workplace. No worker can keep up to date on new working methods, etc., if they are denied the training to do so, and this is one way in which age discrimination in the workplace can occur.

We need to recognise the contribution that each age group can and does make to the economy, not penalise one group to favour another.

Please comment, particularly if you have had any personal experience of issues like this.