Women over 65 still in jobs will soar to 37% in 6 years

MORE women than men will be working beyond the age of 65 by 2020, experts predict.

This is because more women are in employment, they have a longer life expectancy and many have smaller pensions.

In six year’s time, 37 per cent of women in their mid to late sixties will still be working, outstripping men for the first time.

Only a third of men that age will be in a job, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says today.

In 2000, just eight per cent of women aged 65 to 69 had a job.

Pensions expert Ros Altmann, a former Downing Street adviser, said it showed Britain was ‘on the cusp of a social revolution’.

She said: ‘Women are living longer than ever before. Many are working because they have not got a pension. But many are doing it because they want to.’ Older women who work regularly typically do so part-time and say they like the social interaction of the workplace and flexibility that many jobs now allow.

The number who are working is being partly fuelled by the Government’s decision to increase the state pension age.

Neil Duncan-Jordan of the National Pensioners’ Convention, fears the women will typically be in low-paid jobs.

He said: ‘There is one fact of life – if you are low paid, you will get a poor pension.

‘Many women are realising that the only way that they can survive in later life is to work.’