Tuesday 16 August 2022 10:52 PM Now the over-65s are flocking back to work with a record 173,000 returning to ... trends now
People aged 65 and over are flocking back to work as the promise of higher wages offers a chance to cushion the impact of inflation.
A record 173,000 more entered employment in the three months to June, according to official figures published yesterday, even as the rest of the workforce shrank by 14,000.
That was despite wage growth at 4.7 per cent failing to keep pace with the surge in the cost of living.
After taking account of inflation, pay fell by 4.1 per cent in real terms – the biggest decline in records going back to 2001.
A record 173,000 more entered employment in the three months to June, according to official figures published yesterday, even as the rest of the workforce shrank by 14,000
But the nominal increase is better than nothing at a time when 65-year-olds, following changes in recent years, are still a year away from being entitled to draw state pensions. Those pensions rose by only 3.1 per cent in the spring. But inflation hit a four-decade high of 9.4 per cent in June and figures today are expected to show its grip tightening as it climbs close to 10 per cent.
The Bank of England expects inflation to top 13 per cent in October.
Rising energy bills – forecast to climb above £4,000 a year next year – as well as ballooning supermarket prices, which are adding more than £500 a year to household spending, are eroding the value of consumers’ pay packets.
The labour market figures, from the Office for National Statistics, showed unemployment holding steady at 3.8 per cent, close to five-decade lows, even as fears of recession loom.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it showed that ‘the jobs market remains robust’. Yet the rise of around 160,000 in the overall number in employment was smaller than expected by economists.
Maurice Taylor, 78, has had two jobs since re-entering the workforce. After retiring ten years ago from his job in sales, he took up a role at a call centre for taxi and courier firm Addison Lee earlier this year
Meanwhile job vacancies, still close to a record high, slipped to 1.274million in July. Liz Truss, the Tory leadership frontrunner, said: ‘What’s very important is we get our economy going. We are unleashing investment right across the United Kingdom.’
Shazia Ejaz, director of campaigns at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said the figures reversed the trend of older people leaving the workforce during the pandemic.
‘The cost of living crisis will be forcing some people
