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A Job Centre Plus shop in central Portsmouth, Hampshire, February 11, 2009
THE number of jobless benefit claimants aged 50 or older has reached nearly two million for the first time, a study has found.
Those out of work and claiming benefits has risen by 600,000 among 50- to 64-year-olds since February 2020, reaching a total of 1.99 million in November 2024, the Centre for Social Justice report, published today, showed.
This has been attributed in part to a rise of more than a fifth in the number of health-related exits from the labour market among older people owing to long-term sickness since 2015.
The centre-right think tank has recommended the government establish a new national work & health service to encourage the retention of over 50s in the workplace.
The report also recommends the introduction of age-specific employment targets for workers in their 50s and 60s, as well as strengthened occupational health services and extra specialised careers guidance.
Mercy Muroki, development director at the CSJ, said: “Workers over 50 bring decades of skills, insight and experience.
“Even a modest rise in employment among economically inactive people over 50 could generate billions in tax revenue and welfare savings.”
Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
Our economic system is broken – and unless we break with the government’s obsession with short-termist private profit, things are destined to get worse, warns Mercedes Villalba
