Forties People

Explaining the research, CROW’s Director, Professor Stephen McNair, said, “Our first project has been a national study of 5500 people, looking at their job changes, why they change, with what effects in terms of skills, responsibility and working time and what support they need to make these changes.

We wanted to find out whether older people are more or less mobile than younger people, why they choose to retire (or not) and what kinds of change in the workplace might make staying in work more attractive……

We want to understand how the talents of people over 50 can help overcome skills gaps and shortages, and the kinds of education and training which might help with this.”

Some of the key findings of the research are :-

People want to work after retirement. More than half of all the people over 30 in work say they would like to work part-time after they formally retire. For men the number who say this increases as they get older.

Increased responsibility and more skills are the commonest outcomes of job change for everyone under 60.

Most people get no help to develop new skills: for 40% of all job changers, the change means more responsibility and/or more skills, but less than a third of these get any formal training to support this.

Most people change jobs for positive reasons, up to around 60 (years of age), but external reasons (outside the control of the individual) become progressively more common with age. People with higher qualifications are more likely to change jobs, and more likely to do so for positive reasons rather than negative ones.

Most people change jobs to develop their careers: up to the age of 60, the commonest reasons for changing jobs are career related. Only after 60 do more people say they want to reduce pressure

Most people change jobs for work related reasons, not lifestyle ones: reasons like promotion, developing skills and redundancy are more common than lifestyle reasons like wanting more flexible hours, less stress or domestic responsibilities.

People in large firms are more likely to make job changes, to do so for positive reasons, and to continue to do so into their 60s.