This morning of the office of National Statistics published figures into the working status of people over the age of retirement age. The shocking figure of the report was that the number of people working past the state retirement age has more than doubled in the past two decades, from 753 in 1993 to 1.4 million in 2011.
Some the reports other key findings are listed below
- Workers over the the age of state retirement are more likely to be self employed with 32% of older workers compared to 13 of young workers.
- Older workers are more likely to work part time with 66% of older workers working part time compared to 13 of younger workers.
- In the final quarter of 2011, over half 51% of workers above State Pension Age (SPA) were in organisations with a workplace size of 1-24 employees. For those under SPA, 35 per cent worked in smaller firms. Smaller firms may be less likely to offer company pensions, meaning that workers in small firms may have to work longer for financial reasons.
- Of the 1.4 million older workers above SPA in the UK in the final quarter of 2011 around 39 per cent were men and 61 per cent were women. More women are staying on at work beyond the pension age.
- South East and South West of England had the highest number of workers over SPA in the UK.
The full report is available here
