An age-old problem

Travelling back from work one day, I overheard a woman – speaking loudly, I should add – advising a colleague on the redundancy process for an employee.

“The only thing they could say is age discrimination,” she said in those words or similar. She explained the person might state that they will find it hard to find a new job due to their age. “But you could say that we’ve also hired them at an older age.” Problem solved.

The ‘problem’ is of course older workers. A new study has confirmed what we all knew: there is a shelf life for employees.

I come from a place where job ads had age brackets that would never exceed 45, and rarely 35. In comparison, UK law on age discrimination is progressive. Yet it has not stopped many over-50s falling into what the Centre for Ageing Better calls an ‘unemployment trap’, with 27 per cent economically inactive.

This statistic should make for uncomfortable reading for policymakers and commentators advocating longer working lives and higher state pension ages.

For those over-50s struggling to find employment, early access to their pension via drawdown could become the norm. This could particularly be the case in an economy dealing with the fallout from Brexit, predicts Gina Miller, founding partner at wealth manager SCM Direct.

It can only be speculated on at the moment what consequences any increase in early pension access, prompted by potential economic turmoil, would have, but a benign outcome would seem unlikely.

If companies were forced to disclose more on their workforce, not just in terms of investment and staff turnover but also on things like age ranges, this might create some pressure on employers to up their game when it comes to age diversity. They, in turn, could profit from the knowledge and experience older workers often bring.

Sandra Wolf is editor at Pensions Expert. You can follow her on Twitter @SandraCWKand the team @pensions_expert.