Looking For Employment Options For Older Workers, As The Retirement Age Keeps On Going Up

Recently newspapers reported the findings of the Pensions Policy Institute that the normal retirement age be increased by seven years, in order to enable the state to maintain the costs of pensions at the level they were in 1990. This is worrying, since it might indicate that some people will have to give up the thought of ever leaving work and may have to carry on working until they breath their last. However we should not forget another aspect to this: what type of employment is likely to be obtainable by people over 50? There exists a worrying degree of age discrimination by many companies, and some older people may be unable to either find a job or be eligible for a pension. However there is a possible solution in the area of Internet business, where it is possible to work from home in a varied choice of online jobs.

Companies generally appear to prefer younger workers, although at the same time they ask for a long period of prior work experience. One person visiting an employment agency was told they were ‘over the hill’ at 35. Age discrimination is technically illegal, and yet it is very difficult to prove when it is occurring.

On the other hand, people are living a great deal longer now than in the past. Although everybody says it is beneficial to lengthen life for as long as we can, there does not seem to be much consideration of the implications in terms of a significantly greater pensions bill. A further issue is that birth rates are below the replacement rate, meaning that a smaller number of economically productive people will be providing for the pensions of a much enlarged number of old people.

In fact, the money we pay in National Insurance is used to fund those claiming pensions at the moment. It is no more than an ‘IOU’ note for others, and the concern is that when people now under 50 want to stop working, not enough funds will be available to pay pensions.

Senior citizens’ charity Age UK has found that the number of jobless people over 50 who have remained out of work for at least one year, has jumped up by more than 50% in the last twelve months, due to the more severe impact of the downturn on the older workforce. Nearly four fifths of of the 50+ unemployed are men, so it seems that older females may have more success in getting part-time or temporary positions. The situation may well be exacerbated by the transfer of 750,000 older people now classified as available for work as they are no longer considered disabled, as part of the government’s drive to cut spending.

It needs to be asked, what solution could online jobs in Internet business offer for this question? To start with, it is without doubt a line of work where ‘silver surfers’ are as capable of succeeding in as people in their twenties and thirties, and their knowledge from their previous careers can also be beneficial. Second, they allow people to work from home, so people who are disabled could still work without a problem in such posts.

Discrimination against older workers may be partly down to subjective prejudice. If you see a person and think they are past it, then they are not likely to be offered a job. In Internet business you can’t see the person you are dealing with, and you cannot tell how old they are, so a judgement is not so rashly formed based on age-related perceptions.

Given raised pension ages and the competition for jobs, the issue of jobs for older people is not going to resolve itself automatically. The ability to work from home in the online jobs created by Internet business may not provide all the answers, but they are a serious alternative for a lot of older workers.