Introduction

In Part One of the book, we examined policy changes in the UK and the US that increase the financial need, and theoretical opportunities, for individuals to continue working in their jobs past age 65. However, we cannot automatically assume that working past age 65 will be as unproblematic as policy assumes. Part Two of the book therefore examines employment prospects at age 65+ through an original analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The focus of the analysis is on England, rather than the UK, because ELSA represents an excellent and comparable data source to the HRS (for more on the surveys see the statistical appendix). However, the results for England should broadly reflect those of the UK as a whole. This is because the legal/pension context in relation to retirement is identical across the countries of the UK, and 84% of the UK population live in England (ONS, 2012). We therefore draw inferences about the UK from our analysis of England.

In this chapter, we begin this analysis by exploring the pathways that people take to working at age 65+. We might expect high employment in the US to be the result of people in long-term jobs staying a bit longer. The US abolished mandatory retirement in 1986, and there is convincing evidence that it helped older individuals to continue in jobs past 65; it is not established that such legislation has helped with the recruitment of older people. The analysis here suggests that working beyond 65 is not simply a case of continuing a bit longer in a long-term career job. People in the US are more likely than their English counterparts to continue working in long-term jobs past 65. At the same time, however, Americans are also more likely to work past 65 as a result of moving into a new job in older age, or because they have returned to work following an absence. The wider literature suggests that movements into ‘bridge jobs’ and returns to work following retirement are not new in the US. However, they are clearly not a well-established route to working past 65 in the UK, which may create particular challenges if individuals need to move jobs in older age.