Grey power: boom in number of retirees

Census shows employment is now at two million

THE number of people in retirement has more than doubled in the past 20 years to almost 550,000, the latest Census figures show.

The figure has ballooned by 88,013 – an increase of almost 20% – to 545,407 between last year’s Census and the previous one in 2011.

The Census also shows how the economic recovery has changed the country’s fortunes as the number in work passed two million for the first time.

Employment figures dipped during the recent economic slump, falling from 1,930,042 in the 2006 Census to 1,807,360 in the 2011 Census, a drop of 122,682 or more than 6%.

A spokesman for Age Action argued that of the number of people in retirement, many are would prefer to be in the active employment, and feel they were ‘forced’ into retirement.

‘We have so many people, hundreds, thousands, every year who are forced out of their jobs for no other reason than they turned 65 and would like to continue working but they can’t,’ the spokesman said.

‘It’s more likely to happen to you in the public sector, but mandatory retirement contracts are not uncommon in the private sector either.

‘The fact that we are living longer is a success story but it’s not seen that way. We are living longer and healthier lives, those people who are retired are going to be retired for longer.’

The latest Census revealed there are 2,006,641 people in work – an increase of almost 200,000 since the 2011 Census.

The category of sales and retail assistants, cashiers and checkout operators was the top occupational group with 90,746 persons. Farmers were the next largest occupation group, accounting for 3.5% of the work force, or 69,375 workers.

The next largest category was other administrative jobs with 59,392 workers. Nurses and midwives accounted for 53,910 workers, or 2.7% of the work force.

The category of ‘other administrative occupations’ saw the largest increase, rising from 47,465 to 59,392 workers.

The rapid rise of the IT profession was confirmed by the fact it had the second largest increase in workers. Programmers and software development professionals, grew by 6,873 or more than 50% to 20,113.

Deirdre Cullen, CSO senior statistician, said: ‘This report analyses the world of work in Ireland in 2016, with a particular focus on changes in the numbers at work by occupations and industrial sectors. It also shows the impact of immigration on the workforce.’

In the year prior to April 2016, 82,346 people arrived to live in Ireland, of whom 72,419 were aged 15 or over. Just over 34%, 24,768, were Irish nationals and 47,651 were non-Irish.

Among the Irish group the labour force participation rate was 76.8% while among nonIrish it was almost ten percentage points lower at 67.4%.

A statement released by the CSO said: ‘This lower participation rate can in part be attributed to higher numbers of students among this group.

‘Just over 10% of Irish immigrants were students compared with almost 22% of non-Irish immigrants.

‘Almost 53% of the Brazilians who moved to Ireland in the year before the Census were students, the largest number of any nationality, 2,370. There were also over 500 students recorded from China, France, America, Spain and India.

‘The unemployment rate for all recent immigrants was 20% though there were large variations by nationality.’