Friday 15 January 2010

50+'s retiring gradually

Some new research from Saga suggests that more and more over 50's have adopted a gradual approach to retirement.

Around 24% of people in the age group have rejected full retirement in favour of continuing with some paid work, as well as carrying out voluntary work and having more leisure time. This is up from 19.5% 10 years ago. The group predicts there will be a 50% increase in the number of people who take this approach to retirement during the next 10 years, with around three million over-50s combining work and volunteering by 2019.

The research found that people typically start scaling back their working hours when they are 57, with the average person carrying out 27 hours a week of paid work and eight hours of voluntary work.

Around 97% of people aged over 50 said they would not want to continue working full-time until they reached the state pension age, but 38% would like to work on after 65 if they were offered shorter, more flexible hours, while 69% would like to do some voluntary work.

A third of people who have already retired said they would prefer to still be doing some paid work, although the majority wanted to do 10 hours or less a week.

Among those aged over 50 who had continued in paid employment 70% said they loved working.

Older workers were most likely to enjoy their jobs if they felt connected to the community, with those working in retail, teaching and nursing having the highest levels of job satisfaction.

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