Employers Hiring Older Workers in Britain

In Britain, older workers are rushing into the work force. According to Allister Heath in the London Spectator, “pensioners accounted for 85 per cent of the employment growth in Britain during” the last six months. A full 60,000 of them went back to work.

Why are they going back to work? Who knows? For some it is a choice, and for others it is probably from necessity. Real-estate taxes have been going up pretty sharply in Britain due to escalating home prices.

But maybe the rise in older worker employment is not just the desire of older workers for jobs but a conscious strategy of employers to seek out “seasoned citizens” as employees.

One third of companies are giving school-leavers basic training in literacy and numeracy and nobody is fooled by the government’s propaganda about increasing standards any more.

In fact, employers are finding that older workers with just a basic high-school education—“O-levels” in Britspeak—are more literate and numerate than college graduates. One employer said that

Pensioners tend also to be more articulate, better presented, and have a better attitude to work than many of today’s school-leavers or university graduates; if he could, he would recruit only Polish immigrants or British pensioners.

At the home improvement store B&Q they opened a store in the town of Macclesfield staffed exclusively with people over 50. There were no problems with getting the oldsters to use computers.

The Macclesfield store did better than other B&Q stores in almost every way. Profits were higher by a fifth; staff turnover was six times lower; there was more than a third less short-term absenteeism; and, most remarkably of all, theft collapsed by more than half.

It all gives you a new perspective on an old excuse: “I’m living on a fixed income.”