One in five people in their 50s plan to work for at least 10 years longer than the current state retirement age, creating yet more planning headaches for hard-pressed HR departments.
A survey of 1,500 over 50s undertaken by insurance and pensions company LV= revealed that 6.1 million or 28% of the entire age group intend to keep on working for about six years beyond today’s Default Retirement Age, taking the average to 71 for men and 66 for women. Some 20% said that they expected to work for a full decade past the age at which they could collect their state pension.
Ray Chinn, LV=’s head of pension, said: “The trend of people retiring well into their 60s, or even 70s, has been increasing slowly over the last few years. The rising cost of living, low interest rates on savings and the fact that, as a nation, we are living longer, has had a significant impact on our retirement aspirations.”
The firm’s ‘Working Life Index’ revealed that some 1.6 million workers more than last year intended to defer their retirement.
The key motive was money and the fact that people could simply not afford to give up work (30%). But some 4.3 million workers who had formerly retired also said that they resumed employment because they ‘missed being part of the working environment’ or felt too young to quit entirely.
