I’ve recently come across an article in Die Welt about a sizeable increase in the number of German workers over 65 years of age. The piece refers to a report by Ina Esselmann and Wido Geisthe from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research on the topic. Of course, this finding could either be seen as good or bad news for aging workers, depending on the reasons for the increase. One of the conclusions of the report, however, is that financial insecurity in old age is not the main reason behind this increase. In fact, it seems that those already better off are the ones working longer: “Factors with a significant influence on the probability of those between the ages of 65 and 74 remaining active in the workforce include a high level of educational qualifications, a highly skilled expert or management position and especially self-employment. (…) Today, gainful employment among the elderly is thus less a result of a low pension than of good job and earning prospects.”

This type of results suggests to me that (at least some) older workers are successfully mastering their work environments, which may indicate that aging is not necessarily associated with decreases in work performance… (I’m hopefully writing a paper about this soon!)

I was also interested in seeing whether the trend observed in a number of EU countries can also be seen in Switzerland. Esselmann and Geisthe provide their data online (thank you!) and the Bundesamt für Statistik supplies what seem equivalent estimates for Switzerland (I’m a big BfS fan!). The figure below seems to suggest a similar trend for the last few years in Switzerland, but, more impressively, a rather high rate of individuals over 65 in the Swiss workforce relative to other countries. It would be interesting to find out the motives keeping these individuals at work…