What jobs for 60+ year olds?

Lawyer jobs swallowed by AI? Are you having a laugh? Successful lawyering is hugely about soft skills including huge amounts of persuasion, negotiation, collaboration, hutzpah, decision trees, difficult legal concepts & clever logic. Which is far beyond what AI can conceivably do in near future. LLMs hallucinate their way thru everything and understand no legal principles at all.

The people I know age 60+ still in paid work are project managers, administrators, researchers, lecturers, lots in teaching environments, supermarkets, accounting, office jobs, receptionists, road builder, roofing salesperson, fiction writer, PA, statistician, cleaners, care workers, hairdresser... Example: ~64yo guy now in a supermarket worked in a news agent previously (& many other places, NA was shut down suddenly) until about April 2024. He was out of work maybe 5m. A challenge was finding somewhere local he could get a job in his small town.

The national labour shortage is so huge that most people of any age can get hired elsewhere if they work at finding a job... important not to be priced out of jobs market, of course. If you have commitments that require a salary 60k+ then you'll end up turning your nose up a lot at available jobs if you have to suddenly switch industry.

"CEOs and very senior people" are very much not 1 in 10 of the workforce in their 50s and 60s!!

I’m a Business Analyst.

A few have been there donkey's years. I've been there about three years. Some of the different projects run for 2/3 years so people will come in on a new project all the time so to answer your question a mixture of both really. It is a charity that supports older people though so I guess they are more likely to empl0y older people. My manager is 67 and the CEO in their seventies !

Yeah, but if they were made redundant or lost their job, they would hugely struggle to get a new related job. Companies don't hire older workers. The bias is huge.

Of course, it isn't just whether we can do the job. It's getting hired. And of course, old person doesn't get hired.

I've always been very employable and found it easy to move between jobs. But since I turned 50? Nope. Despite being excellently qualified and very experienced.

Give me a job and I'll do it very very well.

After I left teaching through ill health I started in a new career area in my late 40s. I stayed there for 15 years in a variety of projects. I got a new part time job at just short of 60 and went on secondment for a while. In my early 60s I was doing physically demanding outreach work in offender management. While working full time I retrained and qualified in something else and at 63 I left to concentrate on self employment. It's a good thing I did as I have mobility issues now. I'll be 70 next year and I'm still working part time. I think it's vital to future proof your career where possible.

I’m fascinated! Tell me more?

I'm in my early sixties. IT Programme Manager. Been at my current workplace for about four years (aged 58). Started as contract then converted to perm. Ideally would like to stay until I retire but there is very little stability nowadays so who knows.

Project manager, engineer, sales, experienced tradesman (with someone else doing the lifting).

A lot of people will continue to do what they've always done. A percentage will find to avoid doing what they've always done.

Are they new recruits though or have they been there donkeys years?

But these people are probably just in the same job they've been doing years. If they are all made redundant tomorrow how many would be able to get same/similar roles in their 50s and 60s..............

Have you been in the same company for years though or recently got this job?

Being a TA is exhausting and stressful as more and more are given more responsibilities to look after children with different needs. They only have a 30 minutes break and literally don't stop. All the TAs round our way are nearing retirement and can't wait to stop. The job pays peanuts too.

Sure, and I also still have my own job - but I don't know for how long, and AI is certainly a threat to my job. 4 people in my office were made redundant in the last few months, and none of them have found a new job yet. One is late 50s and another is in his 60s, so both have a few years to go till pension age.

Very true 😬

So my plan is to just hang in there as long as possible and then retire. I really don’t want to do retail, manual or call centre work.

In reality a high number of retail stores have closed their doors on the high street and many call centres operate from different countries so even these options will have slim pickings on the job market. The market will become highly competitive IMO.

OP asked

Reading all the threads about redundancies, AI taking over jobs but pension age going up - what jobs are all the 55/60 plus year olds meant to have?

The point I was making is that most have their ‘own’ job, the job they’ve always done, they don’t just stop at 55.

Those that have stopped two of the teachers and a doctor) are working in events, at an estate agency and at the local museum.

Over 60 and work freelance in IT mostly in the financial sector and in areas such as IAM, AFC or TM (control function).
Over the course of my career I have managed several projects covering process automation, which is a very good thing and something AI should be more than capable of doing - if given the right input.
And there's the rub. AI, whilst it can "learn" always needs to be taught and its outputs checked.
As PP have said, AI will not be replacing conversations between, say, Audit and Control Functions any time soon. In addition "relearning" is required when there are any new regulatory requirements or changes to laws governing financial conduct or changes to sanctions imposed on countries, companies or individuals, for example.
Whereas AI might be able to flag up unusual behaviour or a violation of certain rules (and software has already been doing this for decades, so nothing new there) it cannot "resolve" or "evaluate" a given situation. This will always need to be done by an experienced human being.

I think the job market is really difficult at the moment, when I was leaving school there were far more retail jobs for example, call centres weren't offshore, recently much of the tech industry has been offshored and a lot of call centre work has been replaced by chatbots. Civil service seems like a good option for those 50+.

Operative word being ‘expertise’. Not everyone has that type of job.

It’s AI not computers.

I had to find a new job in my late 50s/early 60s and it was really hard. I couldn’t get an admin job to save my life, the interviews were not tailored to my age group (asking a 62 year old where they see themselves in five years time aargh, I wouldn’t mind but it was just a part time receptionist job). I did get work but it ended up being too physical. I’ve pretty much given up now and rely on a couple of work pensions (thank god I have those) until my state pension kicks in.

People in professional/office jobs will most likely be fine. It's the people who have always worked in manual jobs who are screwed.

I'm in my 30s and have given it consideration in my own career plans. Can I still do this job full time when I'm 68? If not, will I be able to easily move into a related job that I can do full time?

Traditionally, people could afford to buy their own home so by the time they were in their 50s or 60s, they'd paid the mortgage off. With no housing costs to pay, they could afford to work part time. That's no longer the case for a lot of us so we have to plan how we are going to pay the ever increasing rent (no housing benefit won't cover it, rents are usually much higher than the LHA covered by benefits).

I think the trick if you're in a manual job is to change your career to something office based by the time you're in your mid 40s. I'd have said by your 50s but I've seen a lot of posts on here from people saying they're struggling to find work in their 50s.

I love being a TA but I’m nearly 60 and trying to sit on the floor mat with reception children, or running after a child that’s bolted is difficult. I can’t imagine another seven years of this.