“With more than half of the annual increase in the number of people in work occurring among those aged between 50 and 64 years old, older workers are fuelling the UK workforce. A fixed retirement date is increasingly being replaced by a more flexible attitude towards work and retirement, with many people choosing to combine elements of the two as they get older.
“Ten years ago 72% of men and 58.5% of women aged 50 to 64 were employed. Now these employment rates have increased to 76.6% and 68.4% respectively. And the proportion of workers aged 65 years and older has increased from 7.5% to 11.1% in last ten years*.
“The changes to the state pension age for women is likely to have contributed to the increase in the employment rate among older women over the last few years and with the state pension age set to rise to age 66 for both men and women by 2020, more people will begin to plan their retirement in line with state pension age increases.
Self-employed
“The self-employed population (4.96milion) in the UK has grown by 167,000 people in the last year. With the self-employed now representing 15.1% of all people in employment, the pressure should be mounting on the government to find a retirement saving solution so they aren’t excluded from the benefits of auto-enrolment and a workplace pension.
“As auto-enrolment has become the standard method for retirement saving for those in the workplace, there needs to be an equivalent to encourage the self-employed to save for retirement too. Otherwise we risk creating a group of pensions ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ who do not benefit from the regular retirement saving that auto-enrolment has introduced.”
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