Saturday, January 14, 2017

Working in retirement - numbers up in Britain and France

The number of people electing to continue working after they have reached the 'official' rtirement age is on the increase in both France and Britain.

In France in 2016, some 450,000 retired people were recorded as working - twice the numbers ten years ago, but bearing in mind that the retirement age is lower than most other countries, at 60 or 62.

Latest reports in Britain also show a doubling of the figures for over 70s and still working - 485,000 today (compared with 271,000 five years ago) and a remarkable 42,000 still working after reaching the age of 80 (compared with 21,000 five years ago).

Looking ahead five years, France's active population has been predicted as reaching 1.2 million more people today, together with an increasingly elderly population living longer. There is also a discernible population shift to the south. Unskilled work will generally be harder to find, with increasing 'professionalism' required for most jobs. More jobs will be created in the 'care' sector looking after the elderly and more public money spent on education and training.

Compared with Britain, when continuing to work in retirement is a relatively simple process - you don't have to notify anyone and simply add your earnings to your pension and other sources of income - the French have managed to create another bureaucratic nightmare, involving declarations, investigations and restrictions too complicated to explain in this post! I may return to the subject later after more research.

Suffice it to say that France operates 37 different retirement 'régimes', largely depending on your jobs, and there are increasing reports from some areas of France where one year or more after giving up work and entering retirement, some people are still waiting for their first pension payment and/or at least what they are entitled to. If you have changes jobs during your working life, the first difficulty is assembling and verifying that contributions have been paid, iften going back decades. It is a nightmare for the bureaucrats let alone the pensioners concerned.

The organisation CIPAV has been singled out by the government - and is the appropriate régime for many self-employed - for providing no or incorrect information to its members and ordered to apologise and pay compensation.  

Posted by peterdanton@orange.fr