Older people keep working due to economic necessity in Australia

Margaret Rees

Workers aged over 65 are increasingly remaining in employment or seeking work in Australia. They are the single fastest growing age group securing work—up by 11 percent in the past 12 months alone, according to a Nine Media report.

This is primarily due to financial necessity, produced by higher age pension qualification ages, falling real wages and inadequate superannuation retirement incomes. Instead of enjoying the right to retire after decades of labour, workers are being forced to keep going.

Age pension eligibility is rising in stages from 65 years of age to 67 by 2023, due to measures imposed by the Rudd Labor government in 2009. An increase to 70 years has been mooted, but not yet attempted by the current Liberal-National Coalition government.

Governments around the world are implementing similar retirement age increases. OECD countries on average have registered a three-year increase, from 63 years for men born in 1940, to 66 years for those born in the middle of the 1990s.

Existing pension arrangements are being declared unaffordable, purportedly due to ageing populations. In reality, retirement periods are being reduced as part of a broader offensive against all welfare entitlements, in order to slash corporate and income taxes, and push more workers into low-paid work.

In Australia, the labour force participation rate for those over 65 started to accelerate from around 2004. The rate for men aged over 65 increased from 10.1 percent in 2004 to 17.6 percent in 2018. The rate for women over 65 increased from 3.3 percent to 10.3 percent. The overall rate more than doubled from 6.2 percent to 13.7 percent.

A record 610,000 workers aged over 65 are in the paid workforce, either part time or full time. Many others are trying to obtain work. There has been a 39 percent jump in the number of unemployed over 65-year-olds seeking full-time employment, and total unemployment among these age group—of those seeking any kind of job—has grown by 27.9 percent.

Older workers are also taking on more than one job. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that between 2011–12 and 2016–17 the proportion of people over 60 working more than one job grew by 18 percent—4 percent more than the national average.

Many older people are returning to work to maintain a decent quality of life, after discovering they did not have enough savings for retirement, partly due to longer life expectancy. Between people born in 1940 and those born in the middle of the 1990s, life expectancy is projected to increase by six years on average.

Medical studies have proven that good health and life expectancy in older people is related to income. Moreover, some jobs are more physically demanding, and more damaging to health. Asking a construction worker, shop assistant or cleaner to keep working beyond 65 is very different from asking a company executive or professional worker.

There has been a media barrage promoting the “world of work” as more fulfilling than retirement. Yet when driven back into the labour force by harsh economic necessity, older workers are competing with younger workers and may have no choice but to accept minimum wage jobs.

Even when they qualify for the age pension, those renting privately often fall into debt and face poverty. At least 24 percent of aged pensioners do not own their own home. According to the Benevolent Society, older renters spend less on healthcare than those who own their homes. This is also true for insurance, utilities, vehicle fuel and food.