Do over-fifties need to get back off the golf course and into work? That’s the narrative that ministers have been pushing recently, with Jeremy Hunt saying later life ‘doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course’. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is conducting a review of the factors keeping people out of the workplace in time for next month’s Budget.
But a report out today from pensions consultancy LCP suggests ministers might be barking up the wrong tree. LCP’s analysis points out that there are fewer people of working age who are retired now than at the start of the pandemic, and that the missing workers are more likely to be long-term sick. Less golf course, more NHS waiting room.
The report says while the increase in economic inactivity is now 516,000, the number in the ‘retired’ category has fallen, but the number of people who are ‘long-term sick’ has risen by 353,000 since the start of the pandemic, and this accounts or more than half of the growth in inactivity over that period.
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