PRIME Initiative

How facts are reported often affects how people respond to them. So the changes made this month by the Office of National Statistics in how it reports age in its main labour market figures is a welcome development.

The most important change in the newly released August 2010 ONS labour market statistical bulletin relates to the way women are treated. Previously men and women over 50 were treated differently, with separate male 50-to-64 and female 50-to-59 female reporting categories.  Women over 60 were considered as having retired from the labour market.

Now both men and women are reported in the same age bands, making direct comparison between the genders much easier. ONS will be doing this with historic data too, all the way back to 1971. For now though the most immediate side efect is to boost the 50-to-64 workless figures, since woman over 60 can now be included.

Source: AgeUK, based on ONS Labour Market figures

This change is entirely legitimate.  It just recognises the reality of modern life: many women aged 60-to-64 need to earn a living.

Not only is the state pension they receive (from the age of 60 at the moment but rising in steps from next year to 65 by 2020) reduced if they had taken time out to look after a family, but family life no longer guarantees financial security in the way it was once asumed to do. Many older women nowadays find themselves suddenly on their own after the break up of a relationship. Divorce in its many modern forms still often leads to poverty, for one or both of the participants, just like it always has.

Going back to the newly released ONS figures, what can they tell us? The big picture is that there are now 3,605,000 people, men and women, aged 50-to-64 who are workless. That is over 32 per cent, or fractionally below one in three.

Long term unemployment amongst the over 50s is rising. Amongst the registered unemployed some six per cent of the over 50s have been out of work for over two years, whereas the figure for the under 50s is half that at three per cent.

The number of over 50s that have been out of work for over six months and claiming Jobseekers Allowance has risen by over 22,000 in the last twelve months.

This is borne out by PRIME’s experience. Nearly 20 per cent of the people who contact us for help have been workless for over two years.

So what needs to be done?

Here are five suggestions.

Top five ways of tackling older unemployment

1. Reduce the delay in getting older people onto back-to-work programmes. Jobcentre Plus still seems to operate a six-month rule for the over 50s. This means they won’t put you on New Deal programmes until you’ve been waiting on benefit for six months. The delay is bad for everyone, but is particularly damaging for those wishing to work their way off benefit by setting up a new business, since that’s going to take quite a while anyway.

2. Waive tuition fees for the sort of vocational courses that would enable workless older people to get back into work through self-employment. The state really is the only player capabe of having a positive impact here. Banks are very reluctant to lend to older people who need the money for a vocational course, or indeed any course. But you’re not going to be able to work as a locksmith, caterer or gas fitter without the qualificatons.

3. Get rid of poverty traps in the welfare system. Housing benefit is a particular problem for anyone thinking of starting a business, since it hard to find out when exactly the money will stop if you start working. People need to know when their business needs to be earning enough to replace the benefits they have coming in. Not knowing is a major disincentive to starting. If we want to encourage entrepreneurial behaviour ideally people need to know that if the worst happens and their business fails they can at least go back to the same level of welfare support they are on now.

4. Keep funding business support for new start-ups in the UK. The over-50s are an entrepreneurial group, but most of those who find themselves out of work haven’t been entrepreneurs all their lives. They need basic help, including business mentoring in the early stages and free business health checks in the first couple of years of trading.

5. Improve the visibility of existing help for out-of-work adults - and in particular those wishing to work their way off benefits. People who have been working all their lives don’t know all about the benefits system and often find it depressing. They will inevitably get to learn about Jobcentre Plus, but their chances of hearing about about other sources of free or low-cost practical help for self-employment (often sponsored by local councils) is much less.

So these are PRIME’s suggestions.  All five could all be wrapped up in a New Enterprise Fund for the over 50s, since they do reflect many of the government’s stated aspirations for a “Work for Yourself”  programme.

Hopefully the arrival of a new government on the scene representing not one but two political parties will mean a new openess to good ideas.

But what’s a bit depressng about the list above is that so many of the ideas closely echo recommendations we made back in 2004 in PRIME’s report “Towards a 50+ Enterprise Culture“.

PRIME does its bit on point 5 above with our online support directory, which lists of sources of reputable practical help around the UK that we know about. But considering it is often tax payers’ money that is ultimately paying for many of these schemes it’s surprising there’s no centrally maintained up-to-date list the public can refer to.

Olderpreneurs are not being put off by the recesion. A higher proportion are going ahead and giving self-employment a go than five years ago.

These are among the preliminary results of a follow-up study PRIME is currently conducting. We are ringing a sample of 500 clients who contacted us between six months and 18 months ago to find out what has happened to them. The timing makes these people clients of the recession, which is generally held to have started in the second quarter of 2008.

2010 preliminary results

We did a very similar follow-up study asking many of the same questions at the end of 2005. The results showed slightly fewer over-50s starting than now, and many more giving up.

2005 results

We plan to analyse the results more once we have completed the fieldwork in the next few days. But one contrast between 2005 and now is that more of those giving up then cited getting offered a regular job as the reason - 29 per cent in 2005 versus 21 per cent now. So though the recession does not seem to be dampening enthusiasm for self-employment, it is still diminishing the chance of getting offered a conventional job from an employer.

There is a big element of necessity behind older entrepreneurship - at least among PRIME clients (as a charity we concentrate our efforts on the unemployed and those facing redundancy).

This is the question that is raised in an economic analysis of the ageing of society in the UK and in a far ranging discussion paper. Both are published by BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills) on its mini-website www.bis.gov.uk/ageingpopulation.

You can find the relevant discussion paper here (as a PDF download) and the analysis can be found here.

PRIME would like to highlight three things:

(i) The Discussion Paper invites your input by the 30th June 2010. This is your opportunity to say what you think is important.

(ii) For the first time a paper published by the government states that almost one person in three between the ages of fifty and state pension age is currently out of work. This needs to be emblazoned from the tree-tops to counter some of the knee-jerk media response to unemployment statistics.

(iii) Self-employment for the over 50s is featured as an important labour market response. Olderpreneurship is not seen as a rather quirky side issue, but an important part of the future economy.

(iv) Wow. Someone has been listening.

Click to download PRIME briefing paper as PDF 295K

ABSTRACT This paper summarises the ways in which the recession has impacted on the older (50+) workforce, comparing ONS data for different age cohorts since August 2008 – the point where the UK was entering recession and marked differences in the impact on these age cohorts started to appear. The data is drawn from ONS Labour Market Statistical Bulletins from October 2008 to February 2010, which provides figures from August 2008 to January 2010.

Plans to deal with pension shortfalls by encouraging people to work for longer received a dash of cold water today. Three-quarters of us could be too ill to work, Professor Sir Michael Marmot of University College London warns in a new report.

All but the richest Britons suffer years of ill health. People in the richest neighbourhoods in England live seven years longer than in the poorest, and enjoy an extra 17 years of good health.

Even if you exclude the poorest five per cent and the richest five per cent the gap in life expectancy between those in low and high income places is still six years, and in disability-free life expectancy 13 years.

Much more needs to be done to address health inequalities if raising the retirement age to 68 is really to mean people remaining active and working for longer, the report warns.

The report is not the work of some maverick outfit, but the final paper from the Marmot Commission - set up in 2008 at the request of the Secretary of State for Health. The Commission, chaired by Sir Michael Marmot, was tasked with finding the most effective strategies to reducing health inequalities in the country.

Fair Society, Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review)

Coverage at Times Online

NESTA Age Unlimited Scotland

NESTA, a public body established by Parliament to encouraged innovation and funded with Lottery money, has launched a new programme in Scotland called Age Unlimited.

Here’s what it says:

We are looking for people in their 50’s and 60’s in Scotland to come forward with new ideas that could be turned into live community projects which would improve the lives of older people (people in their 70’s, 80’s and above). The programme aims to test how older people can be engaged in the design and delivery of innovative new services that could improve older people’s health and well-being and reduce dependency on costly mainstream public services.

Maybe you have experience as a carer or volunteer with older people and have skills and experience you’d be willing to share. Maybe you are looking for a new challenge? If so, we want to hear from you. In return we’ve got support and funding to make your idea become real.

More information and the application form for the Age Unlimited programme can be found online: www.nesta.org.uk/age-unlimited-scotland. If you have any queries or would prefer to complete a paper application, please call 01382 229521 or email ageunlimitedinscotland@nesta.org.uk and we will post you a form. Our application closes on 1st March 2010.

Read the recent press coverage in The Herald here: Sheena was a punk rocker…

Here’s a short fascinating research study by the Kauffman Foundation, which funds many education and entrepreneurship programmes in the United States. It’s fascinating not least because US trends often end up happening here eventually.

According to the Foundation’s research it’s people in the 55 – 64 age group who are now responsible for the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity in the US. More surprisingly, the research also found that there were twice as many founders of technology companies over the age of 50 as under the age of 25. So even in hi-tech startups its the oldsters who are making the pace.

It is as if, the report mischievously points out, “Entrepreneurship is the New Mid-Life Crisis”.

So who is supporting and training these older entrepreneurs in the US? They are missing a direct equivalent of PRIME, which has always argued that we need to invest more here in providing free support, help and advice for potential entrepreneurs and especially for olderpreneurs.

But they do have a famously entrepreneurial culture and a more forgiving attitude to business failure, which may encourage more people to take a risk. The US also has one of the world’s longest-established and largest business mentoring programmes in the form of SCORE (originally the Service Corps of Retired Executives), and a government-funded business support service (the Small Business Administration) that goes right back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Like Ike and the US Congress at the time we believe that an investment in encouraging small businesses is quickly recouped as new businesses are established. It seems to us that the value added and return on investment in supporting enterprise is far greater than the returns on investing in employability.

And yet here in the UK we spend much more on employability schemes than on enterprise support, and vastly more on employability schemes for the over 50s into than on supporting older entrepreneurship.

But attitudes may at last be changing in the UK. SFEDI (the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative) has long been an advocate of free universal enterprise support, but now it is being joined by an association of small business trade associations working together under the Genesis Initiative.

If we invested more in free universal enterprise support, we might not immediately overtake the United States when it comes to having a thriving small-business culture. But we’d certainly speed up the economic recovery.

The Guardian has published a long piece called “Starting a business - what the over-50s need to know“. Businesses started by people in their 50s are more likely to succeed than those begun by 20- or 30-somethings, it says, and author Patrick Collinson goes on to interview some examples of olderpreneurs.

PRIME’s free roadshow events receive a plug, as does the PRIME-Zopa loan.

Other contributors make some telling points.

Dr Barrie Hopson, author of The Rainbow Years: The Pluses of Being 50+ is quoted as saying: “Only one-third of the over-55s are in employment. Many have taken early retirement or redundancy payoffs, or are in ill-health. Yet the studies show that if you want to stay healthy, stay in paid work. It’s very difficult for those made redundant to come back into the workforce, with lots of evidence of age discrimination. Not surprisingly, when no one will give you a job, you have to create your own.”

Ron Botham, author of Nesta’s report The Grey Economy: Third Age Entrepreneurs Critical to Growth, says: “Traditionally, it has been assumed that entrepreneurship is a young person’s game, but research shows that the share of older entrepreneurs has increased and is increasing.

“If an entrepreneur starts up their business later in life they will have much more experience of work,” he continues. “Many older people are attracted to setting up their own business as they can actually work after the official retirement age without any pressure to retire.”

I still have people saying to me that the over 50s are risk averse. And so - the implication often is, that we should not bother with providing enterprise support for them.

Up to now my answer has had to be two-fold.

Firstly, if we use the word “prudent” in place of risk-averse, we get a whole new perspective on older people’s attitude to entrepreneurship. Prudence genuinely is something that often comes with age. Prudence is prior experience and learning applied to a situation - with prudence you calculate risk rather than just pursue it. If our youthful bankers had been a bit more prudent rather than “risk-perverse” we would all be a lot better off now.

Secondly this argument that the over 50s are risk averse is a very sweeping generalisation, and like other such generalisations looks less and less plausible the more you examine it. Are you really telling me that at the age of 50 a risk gene is triggered in all humans that turns them into gibbering wrecks hiding in the corner in mortal terror? There are so many people in the UK aged over 50 but still below state pension age (over nine million and growing) that you would expect to find a broad range of character traits among them. They may not be very dissimilar to the population at large.

But these arguments have never stopped those fond of the risk-averse argument advancing it as if it were established truth.

Now a report from NESTA provides some robust research evidence to back what PRIME has been arguing from the practical experience of helping over 3,000 over 50s a year. Olderpreneurs are no more and no less risk averse than their peers. In fact 50 to state-pension age people make up 22.4 per cent of the economically active workforce but are providing 27 per cent of the successful start-ups, according to this research.

It is a great pity the research is not published in hardback. Then I could use it to thwack the next person who tells me the over 50s are risk-averse.

Download:
NESTA’s third age entrepreneurs report (PDF)

“The grey economy - how third age entrepreneurs
are contributing to growth”, by Ron Botham and Andrew Graves. A research report published by NESTA.

Abstract from NESTA site

The population is getting older, with many more people aged 50 and over. Their economic contribution is also increasing. More people are working beyond statutory retirement age. And more of them are running their own businesses.

At the same time, particularly during a time of recession, the government has a strong interest in encouraging more people to become self-employed or set up their own company.

Particularly where such companies create work for others, they can make a valuable contribution to the recovery.

Eight per cent of UK adults now want to start a business in retirement, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by Standard Life. And 85 per cent do not intend to stop work after they reach retirement age.

YouGov surveyed the opinions of 2,100 adults broadly representative of the UK population. A third (33 per cent) of respondents wanted to continue in full-time work after they reach retirement age. Roughly another third (31 per cent) wanted to carry on in a similar role but on their own more flexible terms. While eight per cent wanted to start their own business.

Commenting on the findings, John Lawson from Standard Life said “Quite simply, people do not get old like they used to. The baby boomers started a trend for redefining what is effectively their ‘third age’ and these findings point to a continued trend for re-writing the rule book for younger generations.”

The full report is not yet available at the time of writing but it should appear on the Standard Life site shortly.

See also Baby boomers don’t want to retire says pension firm.

PRIME has published Generations Forgotten, a study into attitudes to older people as entrepreneurs based on an independent survey of a thousand people.

The study demonstrates the difficulties the over 50s have in finding work as employees, principally because of ageist attitudes - which the over 50s clearly perceive as still rife. And it highlights the key role self-employment plays in making it possible to remain financially independent.

The results also show that there is an interest in self-employment on a huge scale among older people. But government local and national still seems to have a youth-centric attitude to enterprise which is inappropriate in an ageing society.

The survey reveals that there are far more people aged over 50 who are interested in enterprise than generally thought. One person in six in the 50-64 age cohort has considered it. Some 15 per cent of the over 50s polled had already started a business, with 4 per cent starting a business since turning 50.

Clearly self-employment will remain a vital lifeboat for the over 50s for as long as they continue to be discriminated against in the regular job market.

The production of this report has been funded by the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, one of the first fruits a larger ongoing partnership between PRIME and the foundation.

Download full press release (Word)

Download Generations Forgotten report (PDF),

Barbie has joined the ranks of the 50-plus, an event celebrated in characteristic style with an immediate facelift. Plastic surgeons at Californian-based manufacturer Mattel have given the world’s most famous doll “a more natural look, including a thinner jaw line, more almond-shaped eyes and fuller lips”.

It is notoriously difficult to judge people’s ages nowadays, as by and large people are looking much younger than their parents did at the same age. This doesn’t seem to prevent the all-too-common tendency by employers and some advertisers to lump all over 50s together as a single group, putting Baby Boomers and their elderly parents in the same category (often the same scrapheap). The mistake is to ignore the real differences in age, attitudes and ability to work between distinct generations.

In tune with today’s celebrity climate, let’s attempt to correct this by identifying some famous people born in the main years of the post-war boom. There are some surprises!

Selected Baby Boom celebrities by year of birth

1945: Ken Livingstone, Helen Mirren, Debbie Harry, Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart - all 64 this year.

1946: Joanna Lumley, Susan Sarandon, Alan Rickman, Sylvester Stallone, Bill Clinton - all 63 this year.

1947: Alan Sugar, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Hillary Clinton, Salman Rushdie, Glenn Close, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John - all 62 this year.

1948: Prince Charles, Ozzy Osbourne, Samuel L. Jackson, Sven Goran Eriksson, Terry Pratchett - all 61 this year.

1949: Twiggy, Bill Nighy, Richard Gere, Duncan Bannatyne, Arsene Wenger, Martin Amis - all 60 this year.

1950: Richard Branson, Jeremy Paxman, Julie Walters, Bill Murray, Stevie Wonder, Robbie Coltrane - all 59 this year.

1951: Gordon Brown, Kevin Keegan, Michael Keaton, Jane Seymour, Sting all 58 this year.

1952: Vladimir Putin, Jenny Agutter, Sharon Osbourne, Liam Neeson -
all 57 this year.

1953: Tony Blair, Victoria Wood, Kim Basinger, Pierce Brosnan, Keith Allen, William Petersen - all 56 this year.

1954: Bob Geldof, Michael Moore, Annie Lennox, John Travolta, Jackie Chan - all 55 this year.

1955: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Ian Botham, Alan Hansen, Lesley Garrett - all 54 this year.

1956: Rowan Atkinson, Kim Cattrall, Mel Gibson, Martina Navratilova, Sebastian Coe - all 53 this year.

1957: Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dawn French, Donny Osmond - all 52 this year.

1958: Madonna, Prince, Sharon Stone, Michael Jackson, Kate Bush, Lennie Henry, Viggo Mortensen, Marg Helgenberger, Miranda Richardson - all 51 this year.

1959: Hugh Laurie, Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Ben Elton, Morrissey, Linzi Drew, John McEnroe, Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, Rupert Everett - all 50 this year.

1960: Nigella Lawson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Carol Vorderman, Hugh Grant, Sean Penn, Gary Lineker, Colin Firth, Antonio Banderas, Michael Stipe, Bono, Richard Farleigh - all 49 this year.

1961: Barack Obama, Barry McGuigan, Eddie Murphy, K D Lang, Meg Ryan, Nastassja Kinski, Boy George, Frank Bruno, George Clooney, Heather Locklear, Michael J Fox, Peter Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Sarah Brightman, Tim Roth, William Hague, Woody Harrelson - all 48 this year.

Perhaps even more suprising are some of those born in 1969, who will all be 40 this year - Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez.

Worth a read: Advice for Barbie at age 50

Pension giant Standard Life has produced a very interesting report called The Death of Retirement. The key findings are that the current generation of older people are very different to their parents. Above all they want to keep doing things. Baby boomers want to travel, work - and even launch new business ventures. Retirement in its traditional sense is not a concept that appeals to them at all.

“Currently society constrains people into a post-65 mindset which is at odds with their ambitions”, says Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist and one of the report’s authors. “Government, society, industry – particularly the financial services industry, use entirely the wrong language.

“The messages currently conveyed to the next generation approaching third age imply slowing down, being less involved in society, being cautious, risk averse and preparing to be less active.

“Ageism is endemic and could have severe implications for the mental health of third agers because it will ultimately frustrate their ambitions.”

“A huge potential resource is left untapped by not engaging this population, drawing on their expertise, their drive to embark on new ventures and pursue society-enhancing activities such as voluntary work and enterprise.”

Honey Langcaster-James, psychologist

Large survey

The report is based on a large survey of 1,500 people aged 46 to 65 of broadly representative wealth living in the UK. It was then repeated among another sample of 1,000 people from the same age group but representing the wealthiest six per cent of society. So two contrasting groups of normal and great wealth were polled.

Setting the scene, the report says that people from this baby boom generation face a future in which they are likely to be more financially burdened than ever before. They may have to provide for parents who will live a long time and for children who may be financially dependent well into adulthood. This financial burden goes alongside having greater ambitions than any previous generation for their own future after the age of 65.

When asked about their intentions regarding working in the “long-term future”, 30 per cent of the sample representing the normal UK wealth range said they wanted to continue to be involved in work - but on their own terms. This rises to 42 per cent for the wealthier group, who were also asked what their own parents did. Only 15 per cent of parents continued to stay involved in work after retirement. This indicates a massive change between the generations.

When asked about starting a new business, six per cent of the sample of 46-to-65 year-olds of normal wealth want to embark on a new business venture in the future. There was only a slight increase to seven per cent among the wealthier group, so wealth does not seem to be a major factor affecting this aspiration. But the passage of time has certainly produced a change. Among their parents’ generation this aspiration was much less common - seven times less at retirement age.

“It is not that those approaching retirement want to stop working. As our research reveals, baby boomers want to remain active. The challenge for government, society and the financial services industry is how to enable them to remain productive to answer the dilemma of our ageing workforce.”

John Lawson, Head of Pension Policy at Standard Life

It’s widely recognised that our population is ageing, the main cause being the post-war baby-boom.

According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics last year (see ref 1), between 2006 and 2031, the overall population of England is set to rise from 50.76 million to 60.43m, a rise of 19.1 per cent.

However, the number of people of pension age is projected to increase by a much higher rate than this; over this same period, the number of women aged over 60, and men aged over 65 (ie current retirement age) is set to rise from 9.46m to 14.96m - a rise of 58 per cent.

Naturally, authorities are extremely concerned by the increasing costs of supporting older people, particularly pensions, healthcare, social services and housing.

Government is taking measures to tackle this challenge, including a gradual increase in pension age, which starts next year, the biggest impact being for women’s retirement ages.

For a man or woman aged 30 on 1st March this year, they will both work for longer, and will be aged 68 when they reach State Pension Age; however, for a woman who reaches her 50th birthday on 1st March this year, she would be aged 65 before she can draw her State Pension, whereas for a man of the same age, there is no change.

You can get your own projection here. 

These changes in State Pension Age will have a big impact on our working age population; this is currently women aged 16 to 59, and men aged 16 to 64. Pension Age changes across England will bring 2.53 million people into the working age population, who, without these changes, would be retired.

So what support is needed to help older people remain in work? We know that currently, 28 per cent of those aged 50 to State Pension Age are out of work, compared with just 20 per cent of those aged under 50 (see ref 2 below). We also know that employment rates drop off sharply the closer people get to retirement age (see ref 3).

This is why PRIME, a national charity founded by Prince Charles in 1999, helps people look at self-employment as a way of continuing to earn, and remain economically active. Self-employment rates are much higher for the over 50s than their younger counterparts, with around one in five (18 per cent ) working in this way, compared with 11 per cent for the under 50s.

The over 50s also appear to have much better business survival rates than younger people (ref 4), so with careful research and planning, this could be an option that gives people more control over their working lives, and the choice of retiring when they want.

We know from the people we talk to daily that many are looking for more flexible solutions than they can find on offer through traditional employment, and that’s assuming they can even find job opportunities. A lot of people over 50 have care responsibilities for both elderly parents and grandchildren; many have health conditions that require a change in working patterns, and some only want to work part-time.

In today’s economic climate, with rising unemployment, redundancies continually in the headlines, and less jobs on offer, people do need to consider different options, and that’s where organisations like PRIME come in. We are very aware of the challenges self-employment presents, particularly to someone who has spent all their life as an employee, and often in the same organisation.

There’s a lot of help and information on this website , but if you can’t find what you’re looking for call us on 0800 783 1904.

References 

1 ONS, 2006-based subnational population projections by broad age-groups and old age dependency ratios.

2 Annual Population Survey, ONS, Jul 2007-Jun 2008

3 Nigel Campbell, “Decline of Employment Among Older People in Britain”,
Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, 1999

4 Cressy and Storey (1995) show survival rates after six years amounted to 70% for businesses with owner/managers over 55, while the average rate for all start-ups was only 19%.

5. Findings from: The Economic Impact of Ageing on Entrepreneurship and SMEs by M. Peters, R. Cressy, D. Storey May 1999. Warwick Business School. Study initiated and financed by the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission.

Today’s unemployment figures released by the Office for National Statistics paint a worrying picture for those aged over 50.

In the last year (Dec 2007 to Dec 2008), as highlighted by the national media, unemployment in the UK has risen from 1.6m to 1.97m - an increase of 370,000 people.

This increase is made up of 296,000 under 50s and 74,000 over 50s. What’s particularly worrying for the over 50s is that the increase is 31.5 per cent, against just 21.6 per cent for younger working-age people.

This now means that of all unemployed people, the number aged over 50 now represents 15.5 per cent of the total, as against 14.5 per cent a year ago. What’s more, once on Jobseekers Allowance, younger people tend to get back into work quicker than the over 50s, resulting in a higher proportion of older people becoming long-term unemployed.

It’s interesting to note that employment figures have seen an increase of 86,000 from those who are of pension age, 50,000 of whom are women. Is this an indication that more older people want to, and are capable of, work beyond our current State Pensions ages? Or is it through necessity, with devalued pension funds, badly performing savings, and inadequate State Pensions?

Nationally, around 20 per cent of working over 50s are self-employed, and benefit from better business survival rates than younger people, mainly through life experience and better planning & research.

So this can sometimes be a solution to continuing to work in today’s economic climate, and achieving the flexibility to fit around other commitments.