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CHAPTER 7
Learning, work and later life in the UK: guidance needs of an ageing workforce 131

A further confusing factor in the research on this issue is that much of
literature dates from the 1990s and before. The validity of this evidence a
decade or more later is severely limited for several reasons:
(a) generational change, which may make the experience of previous
generations of retirees a poor guide to the future. Those now approaching
State pension age are the first of the ʻbaby boomersʼ, born after the
Second World War, and with a very different experience of life and work
from those retiring 20 years before, although the empirical basis for such
generational labels has been challenged (Parry and Urwin, 2011);
(b) nature of the economy. During this period the UK economy has seen a
major shift from heavy manufacturing and extractive industries to service
work (and automation of much heavy work), which means that far more
jobs are now within the capabilities of older workers, and older workers
themselves are healthier, more physically capable, and better educated
(Harper, 2011);
(c) data are often difficult to compare, because of exclusion from surveys of
people over State pension age (which is different for men and women);
(d) change in the impact of gender (see below);
(e) life expectancy has risen significantly during this period. Many older
people are now aware that retirement may last decades, rather than years,
and as a result think differently about how quickly they want to leave work.
Nevertheless, in the past decade the body of research has been growing,
and more detailed survey evidence is becoming available, with development
of the English longitudinal survey of ageing (Banks, 2008), and the arrival at
retirement age of the subjects of the first of the large longitudinal cohort
surveys: all born in one week of March 1946 and surveyed regularly since
then ( ).
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7.6. The older labour market in the UK

In all recessions before 2008, older workers were treated as a disposable
resource: the first to leave, encouraged by early retirement and generous
redundancy schemes. Recently this position has changed strikingly. Between
2001 and 2010 the employment rate for people over 50 rose from 62% to
64.5%, and for those over 65 it rose from 4.9% to 8.4%. Further, this trend
has continued despite recession, with the 65+ rate reaching 9.1% at the end

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( ) See Centre for Longitudinal Studies, at http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/.