More and more older people are working in Europe. In the EU, the employment rate of 55-64 year-olds has increased by 13 percentage points in ten years to reach 60 percent in 2021. Germany was well above the EU average at 72 percent (plus ten percentage points), followed by Sweden (77 percent) and Denmark (72 percent).
The share of working people in Germany between the ages of 64 and 69 has also increased significantly, from 11 percent in 2012 to 17 percent in 2021. The EU average here was recently 13 percent.
However, there are other EU countries in this age group, especially the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia, where significantly more people of this age are in work at 32 and 29 percent respectively.
Highly qualified specialists work longer
In addition to increases in the retirement age, statisticians also cite the rising level of education in many EU countries as a reason for the development. Because: “Higher education levels often go hand in hand with longer employment,” the statistics bureau explains. According to this study, 13 percent of the over-64s in Germany were still working, compared to only 4.5 percent of the low-skilled. At EU level, the picture is similar.
“In the future, a higher labor market participation of older people will hardly be able to compensate for the fact that the younger population is declining and that there are significantly fewer employees in these age groups,” says Frank Schüller, labor market expert at the federal government. Bureau of Statistics. In the course of the shortage of skilled labour, there has also been recent political talk of greater participation of older people in the labor market.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
