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Working and ageing
132 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

of 2010, while rates have fallen for prime-age workers (Office of National
Statistics, 2011).
The age of 50 is an important dividing line in the labour market. After that
point, age discrimination in recruitment begins to be relatively common, and
ill health begins to drive people out of active employment in significant
numbers. Although most of the latter are quite capable of some kind of work,
the market is not good at supporting such redeployment (Black, 2008), and
studies of occupation, life expectancy and health make it clear that those
working in some industries have very much better chances than others
(Marmot, 2010).
However, the labour market continues to change after 50, becoming more
part-time (and part-time working is, by European standards, relatively
common), and concentrating after 60 increasingly in some sectors and
occupations. During the 50s, the market loses its top and bottom. At the top a
proportion of wealthy people retire to pursue other interests, while at the
bottom, those in poor health and on very low pay are forced out, and unable
to find alternative forms of employment suited to their skills. However, during
the 60s the process reverses, with disappearance of middle-range jobs, as
the market divides increasingly between a minority in high-skilled professional
and technical occupations (around 25% of workers in their late 60s), and a
much larger group in relatively low-skilled ones. Among the latter are some
who are continuing a lifetime of such work, while others have moved from
more skilled and highly paid work, either because of failure to find a job which
uses their skills and experience, or through a conscious choice to move to
something less demanding.
A second important factor is the changing nature of womenʼs work. The
skills at work surveys have been studying the skills content of work regularly
since the 1980s, examining the skills and qualifications required for entry to
particular jobs, and the time taken to become fully proficient (Felstead et al.,
2007). This is a much more subtle measure of skills in the labour market than
formal qualifications, and it shows not only a steady rise in the skills of most
jobs over 30 years, but a much more dramatic rise in the skills of older
womenʼs work. Where older women were, 30 years ago, almost exclusively
concentrated in low-skilled manual work, those in their 50s are now working
at comparable levels (though not for comparable pay) to men (Felstead,
2009).
Perhaps the most important division in the older market, however, is
between insiders and outsiders. For those in relatively secure employment,
who are known to make a contribution, the chances of staying longer in work