Boomers don’t have to get on bikes to find work pays

Baby boomers need to weigh up whether they’ve got enough money to enjoy “the kind of lifestyle and living standards” they expect, said Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride.

If not, they should take on jobs delivering takeaways or driving Ubers, suggested the minister during a visit to Deliveroo’s headquarters in London this week.

There has been a predictable outcry among my age group, which roughly covers anyone from their mid-50s to mid-70s, and Stride has been compared to Norman Tebbit, who famously told the unemployed in Thatcher’s day to “get on their bikes”.

It is easy to caricature Stride as another out of touch Tory, himself aged 61 who, even if he loses his seat at the next election, faces a future of lucrative directorships and the other financial sinecures that come the way of former Conservative MPs.

Not for him, the impecuniousness of much of his generation who, now retired, are still battling to pay soaring mortgages, replace old cars and eat well in a cost of living crisis.

But clumsy and uncaring though he sounded, there is basic common sense in the premise that if you want to maintain your lifestyle into old age you should carry on working for longer.

Stride said: “There are loads of great opportunities out there for people and it’s of course good for people to consider options they might not have otherwise thought of.”

He probably didn’t mean just at Deliveroo, though the company has seen a 62 per cent increase in delivery riders aged over 50 since 2021.

There are plenty of older people who have embraced new work challenges, such as teaching, after leaving successful careers in other fields. 

I know of a late entry civil servant in her mid-50s who retired from a high-flying corporate position, perhaps too early. Another acquaintance is an office manager, easily finding work following a brief spell in retirement, and yet another became (you guessed it) a life coach.

We are talking, mostly, about professionals or those from professional backgrounds who are lucky to have had a good education and therefore good prospects at the start of their working lives and a variety of possibilities in later years.

They are also in good health. More than 1.6 million adults aged 50 and over are unable to work because of long-term sickness, a 20 per cent increase in three years, according to research by Rest Less, an organisation for the over-50s.

This decline in wellbeing among boomers is, I would venture, something of a grey area, given the parallel robustness in other parameters, such as life expectancy.

But moving on. Among my family and friends of similar age, about half are still working and of the rest, some have retired, several before retirement age, because they could afford to. Having secured high paid jobs, they now live off generous pensions in their mortgage-free homes.

In my household, we work because at least one of us is pre-retirement age and because we need to. Or rather, we need to if we are, as Stride put it, to maintain the standard of living we expect. That includes holidays overseas; owning a car; few limits on whether we eat out or in, what we drink, and how many times we go to the theatre; and, recently, the luxury of a cleaner who, incidentally, is a 60-plus retired teacher.

Our incomes also cover the usual – home improvements and running costs, essential repairs, bills, bailing out the grown-up children occasionally, personal upkeep (dentist in my husband’s case, hairdresser in mine), and so on.

Should our daughters ever get married or, God forbid, try to buy their own homes, our finances will be even more stretched. At the present rate, I don’t see retirement on the horizon, ever.

That is fine if your jobs, like ours, are fairly sedentary and your employers have no reason to replace you with younger models, provided you cut the mustard. 

Frankly, I don’t understand the present rush to quit the workforce early. Latest official figures show around 27 per cent, or 3,547,000 people, aged 50-64 – that is, who are yet to reach retirement age – are currently economically inactive. This includes around 900,000 who have left work since Covid.

Analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, meanwhile, has found that nearly half of older people who dropped out of work at the start of the pandemic are struggling financially.

Yet, provided fitness is not an issue, there is work to be had – that does not necessarily entail a scooter and Deliveroo uniform – for those who seek it. Besides, labour brings its own rewards.

A few years ago, I went back into an office full-time after finding the family budget wanting. I think I was the oldest person there and office culture had changed in the 15 or so years I had been absent. It was a shock to the system, for sure, but ultimately enriching, not literally but in terms of contacts made and lessons learnt.

There is, too, the wider social responsibility of going to work if you can. Jane Gratton, of the British Chambers of Commerce, warned of the consequences of a contracting workforce.

“With more than 1.2 million unfilled jobs across the country, labour shortages have reached crisis levels for businesses across many sectors and regions,” she told The Guardian last autumn.

For those prepared to tighten their belts in return for indolence – sorry, early retirement – good luck. But don’t plead poverty if you are simply work shy. Mel Stride’s idea is unlikely to be a vote-winner, but there are many over-50s who could help themselves a bit more.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life