Tony Moore is 78 and on the job hunt. He had retired well over a decade ago, but the cost of living is getting too high for him to manage.
Prices of energy, food and diesel have rocketed these last few months. Although the former truck driver is walking more to save where he can, he’s got to go back into work as he nears his 80th birthday to keep financially afloat.
“I’m feeling very frustrated about my job search,” he tells HuffPost UK. “I’m being bombarded by recruitment agencies who aren’t reading my CV and are sending me roles at the other end of the country. I’ve had very few interviews, but I do wonder if my age makes me seem like I’m over the hill.”
The current full State Pension sits at £185.15 per week and one in six people approaching retirement age have no private pension to top this up. In a climate of economic uncertainty – with the pound in flux and warnings that a global recession is on the cards in 2023 – some say it is not enough.
So many older people are going back into work, that the term ‘unretirement’ has been coined. The economic climate is also scuppering plans for those who’d hoped to cut down their hours or retire before the official age of 66.
Data from the Office for National Statistics reveals that more people over 50 are in work or looking for work now than before the pandemic, with an increase in job seekers of 116,000 over the past year. There has been a 200% increase in Google searches for “returning to work after retirement” in the past 12 months.
Debbie*, who’s approaching her 60th birthday, quit her job in 2015 to set up a small baking business for just a few hours a week. It had been going well, and the lower hours meant more opportunities to enjoy time outdoors with family, but the cost of living crisis means she’s searching for more formal work again.
How’s she feeling about returning to full-time work unexpectedly?
“I don’t know if there’s a polite version,” Debbie, who lives in the Highlands, says. “It’s not in my plan, you know. You have these ideas about what you’re going to do. I thought I would potter along doing this baking until I wanted not to do it anymore, so I don’t like being forced not to do something. And I know that’s petty, because people are not able to put food on the table, but that’s my situation.”
Budgets have been drastically squeezed at homes across the country since late-2021, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war shaking the global economy. The UK is suffering the worst energy crisis in Western Europe, due to where we get our fuel and the lack of home insulation. The majority (93%) of adults have reported an increase in their living costs compared with a year ago, and 77% are “very” or “somewhat” worried about it.
“Unless I win the lottery I do not envisage a time when I can give up work,” says Keith Grinsted, 69, who says he can’t afford to live on a state pension and pay the sky-high rent where he lives in Southend. “I’d rather be able to spend my time working for charities and not worrying about income.”
Stuart Lewis, chief executive at the Rest Less organisation, which aims to help empower older people and help them be more represented in the workplace, tells HuffPost UK: “The cost of living crisis seems to have accelerated some retirees’ plans to return to the workplace, with consumer confidence at a record low and people seeing their spending power being eroded on a monthly basis.”
But OAPs heading back into work face further challenges. Ageism is the most common form of prejudice people experience, research suggests, even though age is one of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act.
“We know that workers over the age of 50 receive less workplace training than their younger counterparts and once unemployed, are significantly more likely to end up in long term unemployment,” says Lewis.
Timothy Crawley, 56, emigrated from South Africa to the UK to search for better job opportunities earlier this year. He held managerial positions back home, but he’s struggled to land entry-level jobs here and wonders if discrimination is to blame.
“I’m starting to look for work but I’m struggling because of my age, my age is a big issue in relation to the type of work that is available or [people are] willing to give me,” he says.
Faced with unaffordable food prices, Crawley has been eating soups and fruits, cutting out meat and buying cheaper items in the supermarket where he can.
“I’ve been in management positions where I come from and now to apply for something as small as an assistant or factory worker, you’re looked down upon as though you’re a little overqualified,” he adds.
While he waits for work, Crawley has developed an app called Qiktell where users can communicate with brands and earn money by completing polls. “If you can’t find work, you go out and do something for yourself, that’s my scenario,” he says.
In response to his applications, Crawley says most recruiters tell him he’s not the “right fit” for the role. But Tony Moore has found that recruiters aren’t even properly reading or processing his applications.
“To give you an example of what I’m up against, I have had 16 emails from recruitment agencies in the past 12 hours sending me potential roles, all of which are no match for my skill set,” he says. “I went to an interview recently for a driving role but when I turned up, they were actually recruiting for a carer!”
Debbie isn’t holding out hope following the government’s controversial mini budget (and subsequent u-turns). And with Kwasi Kwarteng now sacked as chancellor (and Jeremy Hunt taking the role), there’s yet more uncertainty surrounding the government's next move.
The baker would increase her work in the kitchen, but the cost of products has risen considerably – meaning that it is barely profitable.
“I was just looking at costs and for example to make Christmas cakes this year it’s going to cost £5 per cake in terms of fuel, which is just not viable,” she says. “There’s a limit to how much you can charge for a cake and a loaf of bread. My butter’s now over two pounds and things like dried fruit which are all imported. A lot of stuff I have to buy in. It’s costing me fifteen pounds per bag of flour for a 25 kilo sack, so it’s just becoming uneconomical.”
With inflation at the highest level in four decades, and experts telling Forbes they expect it to rise through January 2023, there’s likely to be more older people heading back to the workplace as the winter energy bills rack up.
“I’m worried for others,” says Grinsted. “I think many people will struggle this winter and some will use extreme money saving methods that will put their health at jeopardy.”
*Some surnames omitted at the interviewee’s request.