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As French workers stage yet another public show of discontent about president Emmanuel Macron’s raising of the state pension age from 62 to 64, the International Monetary Fund has urged governments to encourage fit, older workers to delay retirement.
Its recommendation is that people of the baby boomer generation should stay in work for longer to help balance public finances amid fiscal pressures caused by an ageing global population.
The IMF said: “The 70s are the new 50s,” and released data that suggested a person aged 70 in 2022 had the same cognitive function as the average 53-year-old in 2000. Physical health had also significantly improved, the IMF found.
Governments burdened with historically high levels of public debt, the IMF said, could not afford to let growing numbers of older workers exit the workforce while they were still healthy and able to work. Instead, it argued, governments could encourage workers to delay their retirement, cut early retirement benefits, and increase pension ages to rebalance the increasingly precarious ratio of workers and retirees.
Thousands of people from across the globe shared with the Guardian how they felt about such proposals. Although some thought the IMF’s idea was good, an overwhelming majority expressed outrage, typically describing the concept that older people should retire later to ease fiscal pressures as “disgusting”, “ludicrous” and “unfair”.
“Seventy is not the new 50. That’s propaganda,” said a 63-year-old NHS admin worker from Dundee. “Having worked since the age of 18, retirement cannot come soon enough for me. I find travelling for work stressful and long for a time when my days are my own. I am tired.”
Many worried that workers in often physically demanding low-paid jobs would be hardest hit if retirement goalposts changed again.
“[It’s] people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who will need to stay in work as they won’t have private pensions and they are the demographic that tend to have poorer health,” said Deanne, from North Lanarkshire, Scotland.
“I believe it’s the poor or just state pension claimants that will have to carry on working, low wage earners and [those in] manual jobs,” said Robert Mcalone, a bricklayer and builder from Bournemouth, Dorset.
“I left school at 16. Before that I worked in hotel kitchens at 14, 18 hours a week. Then construction as a bricklayer builder. I’m 60, fit, don’t drink or smoke, and I’m finding every day a struggle. Fortunately I have my own house and savings, but not enough to retire until 67. I’ve built many houses, schools and hospitals in my time – I think I’ve put back enough into society.”
“I’m trying to work until I’m 70,” said Anne, 66, a night-shift worker at a homeless hostel in the UK. “It’s increasingly challenging. I often sit at work crying due to the effort. It takes me longer to recover from an 11-hour shift. It takes me two days of being off to physically recover.
“Many women friends are also looking after their grandchildren so their children can work, as childcare is either nonexistent and/or unaffordable.”
“Older workers have already done their bit and paid into the system,” said a 61-year-old woman working in event management from Nottingham, a view that was shared by many, alongside hundreds of people who complained that taxes were high while public services had dramatically worsened.
Samuel, an HGV driver from Cumbria, said: “Spending a lifetime paying taxes and never having any of your prime years to enjoy is disgusting, the government needs to ease pressure on public finances in other ways.
“The government is asking us to pay into a system for healthcare and pensions, and increasingly we get less and less.”
“We are paying higher contributions than ever before,” said Adam, an aircraft maintenance mechanic. “I have paid into the system, I want to get back what I paid in.”
Hundreds felt that successive UK governments had simply misspent public funds, and called for drastic policy changes in other areas to balance the books and relieve pressure on public services.
Scores of people argued that ministers should dramatically limit immigration, reduce spending on housing asylum seekers and migrants and cut benefits for young people who were out of work, before asking older people to forgo some of their retirement.
Andrew, 68, from Northamptonshire, who retired at 60, said the government “should stop throwing taxpayers’ money down the drain on foreign aid and funding support for illegal immigrants and abolish unaffordable civil service pensions. Look after our own elderly and homeless first.”
Others suggested benefits should be reduced for the near-record number of people under 65 who were economically inactive.
“Why should we work to [70], put more in for people who don’t work?” asked Susan, a factory worker from Hull. David, 66, from Sheffield, said he was “able to work [to 70] but unwilling to pay for people” who had “contributed nothing”.
Others argued that older people staying in paid work for longer could lead to significant other costs elsewhere – particularly in social care and childcare, where a bulk of the burden is shouldered by older family members acting as unpaid carers.
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“Older workers … may have caring responsibilities for elderly parents, older spouses or grandchildren,” said a 60-year-old primary school teacher from East Anglia.
“If they were working for longer, the care needs of these groups would fall to state funded bodies. Also, many in this age group take on work in the voluntary sector, providing much needed support to charities and local groups.”
Susan Chardin, a 71-year-old editor and English teacher from Bayeux, France, was among many people who said they had experienced ageism in the labour market, a practice they felt would stand in the way of many who might want to delay retirement.
“Governments want [baby boomers] to stay in work, but companies discriminate against older workers,” she said.
“Until policies and programmes are mandated by the government, nothing will be done to make it possible. Moreover, society will have to overcome their long-held prejudices and psychological barriers to hire older workers.”
Others, however, agreed wholeheartedly with the IMF’s suggestions, and various people said they had worked until 70 or older and had enjoyed it.
“That’s what I did,” said Erwan Illian, 72, a retired cabinet maker from Berkeley, California. “It was a financial necessity but also a choice. I was born in France. Retiring at 64, the legal retirement age in France, is in my view ludicrous and selfish. It strains public finances at a time of increasing monetary difficulty all over the globe.”
“I’m game,” said Lewis, a 50-year-old senior rural estate manager for the Ministry of Defence from Bath. “I’d do this for myself, my family, for society. I don’t want to wither away once I retire. Work and social contact stimulates and refreshes.
“If we don’t work older, then there will not be enough tax in the system – my son’s generation will be under enormous pressure.”
“I ‘retired’ in 2010 after working in the heavy building supply business and then started volunteering at major sporting events, such as the 2012 Olympics,” said Malcolm Chevin, 74, from Walton-on-Thames in Surrey.
“I decided aged 67 to go back to work as I needed to do something on a more regular basis. I now work in the food hall at John Lewis on Oxford Street [in London].
“I have no intention of stopping work even though I was diagnosed with cancer in 2022. I enjoy the camaraderie and in fact am taking a fishmonger apprenticeship.”
“People are likely to push back against this idea, because retirement is seen as a right,” said David, a town planner from the north of England. “However, as the cost of living increases, retirement is looking like an unaffordable luxury for the future.”
