Are older workers blocking the job market?

I am not sure I am believing what I am reading here. Age discrimination is one of the last great discrimination areas that we are trying to eliminate – so we don’t need any backward steps. The stance is morally indefensible. Solving one injustice by creating another one is not a very intelligent way forward. Why not remove all women from the workforce to reduce male unemployment? Because it is unacceptable and abhorrent – that’s why!

For more see http://www.inmyprime.info

The tone of this, and much of the content, is quite repellent.

Perhaps those greedy ‘job-blockers’ have to work to survive. Very selfish of them to want to pay their bills, and buy food and so on, I know, but what can you do?!

I too will shortly become an over-60 “job-blocker” – not quite earning at Em’s level (less than half) and hoping that I will be able to continue at least for a few more years until the mortgage is paid off!
However realisitically there is no prospect of anything like full employment in the foreseeable future, and the younger generation will never have a chance if we hang on too long. My personal feeling is that when I reach the age at which I will qualify for a state pension I should at the very least start to consider retirement, on the gounds that my pension, while not a fortune, will be a good deal more than the benefits available to a young person trying to find work. And there is no need to feel that retirement means being cast aside – there are a huge number of opportunites for offering service on a voluntary basis. After all, we are lucky enough to have lived through an age of reasonable prosperity; given the current economic situation, it is unlikely that the next generation (or the one after) will experience the same level of good fortune.

Perhaps if the government stopped pensioners having to pay tax on savings and any extra pensions they have managed to accrue there would be more pensioners able to retire completely. Or is this just too easy and simplistic a suggestion?

The other point I would like to make is that a person can do everything they should do (regarding pension contributions, savings and the like) but all their good work and retirement preparation can be taken away in a very short space of time by (a) companies mismanaging pension schemes or transferring the pension “pots” around from management company to management company, meaning that poor investments and fees reduce the pension pot, and (b) redudancy or other situations (and not qualifying for benefits) meaning every savings pot built up over many years has to be raided in order to survive in the years up to so-called retirement.
I think a certain amount of pension contribution should be compulsory but more money needs to be put into retirement provision by the government, not less. If there isn’t enough money then we need to cut back on services being provided free to non-UK domiciled people, aid to other countries – especially countries like India who should be supporting their own populations now – and “nice to haves” like new monuments.. The priority in this economic climate needs to be to the UK’s own population, for essential needs before any luxuries, and the amount you receive should be governed by how long you’ve lived here and how much you’ve contributed to the State during that period.

Do you think in this day and age it is easy to retire. When you get a state pension which has probably been paid for over 40 years plus: then your Personal allowance is taken of it, then you lose a wage and try to survive when prices are going up. well some people I know are on benefits that dwarf my ?income.Before you say we should have saved more, any of you remember when the mortgage was 15%.

I’m 52, highly skilled, and unemployed for 3 years, but not claiming benefits. I have experienced age discrimination first hand. A large company told me after interview they would keep my CV on file ‘in case a more senior job came up’. That’s after I said “I need a job, pay me whatever you like”. It is not the case that company directors have taken an ageist stance. The trouble is that youngsters of around age 30 have been promoted to the position of deciding who works or not, and they don’t like the idea of a much older possibly more experienced person being around, who might upstage them. I don’t go off sick. I’m a rock drummer, and skateboarder, a teenager in all but name. Enough of the zimmer talk. Ending immigration would be a good start. Or ending the public sector.

All very interesting comments. But – where does the fact that 80% of all new jobs created are taken by recent immigrants to the UK come into the equation? Whenever companies are researched about employment issues they respond that they cannot get workers with the right skills.

The simple but terrible fact is that we have an education system in the UK that is incapable of creating young people who are employable – certainly not enough of them. Why are more over-50s employed – because they exhibit the right work attitudes and have the right skills?

It is like forcing universities to take poorly educated school children. It attacks the symptoms not the causes. Finally, don’t forget that the UK, along with much of Europe, is a country in economic decline and whilst there will be a wealthy strata to society the majority had better get into the habit of living on less state aid and with diminished standards of living. You had better wake up and smell the coffee

Remember the older workers created the country we live in so please leave them alone and it was the younger less experienced workers who broke the world banks and economies. An older worker simply wouldn’t of taken such stupid risks!! Young and old have always worked well together and leaned from each other we should be promoting that as the way forward. You want your training costs reducing then employ one older worker and one younger worker the older workers will pass on their experience and the the younger worker will teach the older worker new ways of dong things It has always been that way and worked very well until now!

I am 47 and already I know I am unlikely to get a full time job again unless something is done and quickly to get the country back on it’s feet.

A. Create a new law demanding corporate social responsibility to maintain a majority percentage UK workforce where it is possible to do so. If services are to be migrated outside the UK then the companies will have to prove that this is justified under set criteria of rules to prove that the migration and its impact on the UK workforce are needed and not just simply for extra shareholder profit.

B. Come out of the EU agreement allowing EU member state workforce migration until all FULL UK citizens are gainfully employed (regardless of age) or perhaps introduce a UK citizen quota and a tax incentive to companies willing to train the UK workers of all ages to do the work they say they can’t at present and this will stop the excuse of UK companies that UK workers don’t have the skills they need so they are forced to look abroad for workers.

C. Introduce a new sort of combined compulsory works/state pension scheme to all new (young) employees where the national insurance contribution payments will be slightly higher to allow for a decent pension later in life. The employee will pay just a little (due to early contribution collection) the company will match this nominal amount and so will the government. The combine 3 contributory payments at a young age will produce a significant result over the employees working life cycle as the pension will move with the employee from company to company within the UK.

D. Introduce a fairer employment discrimination act that has teeth and will if need be will introduce employment quota’s to companies believed to be unfairly discriminating against any group or abusing discrimination laws in favour of other groups.