To think part of the increase in long term sickness is the increase in retirement age?

[Lazykitten]

Thinking of the people I know who are long term economically inactive long term (I believe that counted as over 6 months) and nearly all I know who fall into that bracket are my parents and there friends. Dad was a factory sparky and mum was a cleaner. Dad stopped work at i think around 61, mum does part time caring now in her early 60s but really struggles and I can see her having to give it up soon.

Most of their friends had similar manual jobs and now in their mid 60s a lot are signed off sick waiting for pension. These are people who have had manual jobs since they were 15/16 and their bodies are knackered. They can't (and very little point) in retraining now for their last couple of years before they get the state pension.

I work in an office job so can feasibly see how I could work to my late 60s and beyond, but those who've done manual work for over 40 years have the wear and tear on their bodies that they simply can't. As well as other health problems & decreasing energy levels that come with ageing.

There's got to be a sizeable number of folk age 60-67 that fall in that bracket? And taking it further is it another stick to beat the working class with?

No one is saying it was easy but the younger generation now have it harder than any of us. Even getting a job in a supermarket isn’t straightforward. Having to complete competency assessments to make sure you’re suitable.

I bought my house about 8 years ago and similar properties are going for nearly £100k more today. I couldn’t afford to pay the price it would cost me now but the younger ones will have to somehow find the money for the ridiculously high cost price and take on a high interest mortgage. My mortgage rate was lower as well (same as everyone else). It was easier the further back you go.

Even rents now are ridiculously high. Home ownership is an impossible dream to many. Nurses who have degrees having to go to food banks and the like. It’s a hard time for the younger generation!

Long term early retirement rates are lower now than historically... Teachers, Police, Nurses etc etc all would retire in their 50s, all women at 60.

So thats not it, tax take per capita higher than ever before.

Its waste, low productivity, poor management eg: just take pothole repair, billions spent on repairing these and the repair lasts less than a year, pre Austerity, roads were repaired properly and resurfaced regularly.
another, NHS staff levels - Billions spent on agency staff because we dont look after exiting staff, so they leave... and work for agencies!!! or go abroad and then we spend billions more recruiting from the 3rd world.

Look at the billions spend on Trident? which then doesn't work.

Yeah and I only managed to get my 2 factory jobs because my aunt worked in one, and my parents neighbours worked in the other. So like nepotism. Even so, the jobs still didn't last for long. I was made redundant twice - in around 4 years.

@Fluffywigg I know things are hard for many young people with sky high rents. Competency tests for supermarkets is ridiculous, but you do know older people do these jobs too?
Child poverty and use of food banks has soared.

I left school in 1982. Unemployment was nearly 11%. That year, in some areas of the UK 9 out of 10 school leavers were unemployed. It was tough.

i left school in 79, no qualifications, got a job, in fact i had several before going to evening classes in 83.
Everyone i knew got work & there were loads of schemes for anyone unemployed after 6 months, there were skill centres too, my brother did a welding course, he went on to get some very highly paid work.

What areas in uk have ever had 90% unemployment?

We now send kids to college to do beauty and tourism, landing them with 30k of debt instead, the schemes for the long term unemployed are long gone :(

Yep, my mother went to "night school" to train to be a shorthand typist and worked her way up in the town hall to become the Mayor's secretary (basically his PA) virtually running the council at that time. Then she went to night school to train to become a teacher. That was from a very poor family living in a rented two up, two down.

As you say, it was more a matter of family attitude that held people down back in those days. There were opportunities if you wanted them, especially in terms of adult education/evening classes, etc., which have now largely disappeared after Blair's concentration of all resources on getting 50% of kids to university!

You can't blame the government at the time if your parents forced you to work in a shop or factory rather than encouraging you to get an education and profession!

..

I left school in 1983. During the last few months, I'd been writing speculative letters to local employers. Out of just 5 letters, I got 4 interviews and 3 job offers. I formally left school the last Friday in June 1983 and started my first proper job the following Monday. This was in a run down town with little going for it. None of the jobs were ever formally advertised. I was determined not to be unemployed and not to end up in some crap dead end job. Though I had low expectations of the exam results (ended up mostly D grades!), I proved myself in the workplace just by keeping my head down, doing the work, etc., and took professional qualifications exams studying in my own time, paying for most of the course/book costs, etc. All on less than a pound per hour (£32 per week which was the NIC threshold so employer could avoid employers NIC on it). Basically employer took a punt on what they saw was a "keen/proactive" school leaver, which turned out well for both sides!!

A neighbour's daughter who was a couple of years younger got a YTS job at the local chamber of commerce, doing the usual filing, making drinks, etc., but likewise she took herself to evening classes, got professional qualifications and has just retired from her eventual post as the managing director of that same chamber of commerce after having worked her way up.

No denying it was hard (as it still is), but there were opportunities available for people who were proactive and wanted to better themselves rather than ending up in Woolworths, mostly being evening classes/adult education courses you could do around work. But people needed to believe in themselves, have a positive/proactive attitude and more importantly have a family who didn't hold you back with outdated attitudes.

@sandieollsen thank you. My grandmother was a resourceful woman and my aunt also ended up at Manchester University a few years later. Both my mother and aunt grew up in significant poverty (cockroaches in the walls and bare war rations). My grandmother was in service and my grandfather was down the mines. This kind of guff about girls not having chances is on the family.

My aunt now lives in Beverly Hills. My mother is long gone, but worked for the Law Commission. Life is what you make it.

It took me 11 months and 80 applications to find a job after graduating in 1986. Youth unemployment was terrible.

Thats why The Princes Trust was set up.

It sounds like you made a good life for yourself through grit and determination.

My first job in 1982 was a YTS placement as a labourer on a farm as I was desperate to find anything. I got £23 a week. My keep was £13 a week! When I left the farm I studied and worked my way up through a series of jobs and by the time I retired I was running my own HR consultancy.

It was possible to make a good life for yourself then as it is now.
It's a shame that it was so hard for people then and an even greater shame that 40 years on people who start at the bottom of the heap (especially those without supportive families) still have such a hard fight to make something of themselves.

@bombastix there are always a few people who rise whatever their starting conditions in life. There were former slaves who became business owners. But to pretend it makes no difference where you start in life and how you are brought up is just wilful blindness. To stay on school after 16, or previously 15 years old parents had to be willing to continue supporting their children. Many parents either would not, or could not afford to continue supporting their children and needed them to be working. If families were very poor they often prioritised supporting the boys in the family over the girls.

Life is what you make it. You have to deal with the hand you are dealt, and for some that hand is tougher.

I also think younger people have no understanding of how scarce information could be then. Before wider access to the internet, many did not even know grants were available to go to university. Information relied much more on word of mouth. And those who understand the systems were in a much better situation. I had never even heard of the degree option PPE until I came to mumsnet. Now with the internet information is easily accessible. I can find out how to study at a US university for example. I met someone at the time in a pub who had worked in the country Iceland. She had written a letter to the Icelandic Embassy to ask how to do this, and thankfully for her they replied. Now she would quickly google and join a forum to find out tips.

And kids from very poor families way back largely went to university because they had dedicated teachers that helped them stay on until 18, and helped them apply to university and for a grant. That part is luck.

I really do feel for young people trying to get jobs on leaving school/uni. When I left uni (1974) I could have walked into any of dozens of jobs, and could have taken my pick.

Seventies was a time of plentiful jobs. Eighties were hard times in many parts of the country with high youth unemployment.
What affects young people now is not lack of jobs, but very high rents and ridiculous guarantor requirements. I would have struggled to rent a shared room when young under todays conditions.

Two months ago I lost my grandmother. Twenty years ago, you hardly heard of people in their 40s and 50s still having DGPs with them. Unless DGPs had your parent in their late teens/early 20s and your parent had you. also in their late teens/early 20s.

@NoisySnail - my point was that it is the family that make the difference to whether a girl gets educated or not. It is not on the state. I've heard plenty of tales of families who had smart children but would not accept that they had opportunities. Like I say, my mother grew up in poverty. Poverty itself is one thing, it doesn't mean your ambitions or those of your parents are also poor. My mother was not privileged in any way. All she had were parents that recognised she could do something. They could have prioritized themselves and their own needs but they allowed her bigger ideas.

@bombastix At no point have I said who is to blame. At no point have I mentioned the state.
Things are very different now with the internet. Of course being poor does not mean you are automatically unambitious for your children. But my point was that parents had to know about the opportunities.
These days for example I see on the internet posts about grant schemes for up and coming artists. In the past knowledge of these was largely word of mouth and that meant it was very rarely the poorest who knew about them.

And I know social mobility has decreased. The destruction of further education has helped that happen. Free or very subsidised further education used to be an important route for many people to better jobs. It no longer exists except for functional maths and english.

Whilst intuitively that must be some of it, the stats also show massive increases among younger age groups

Younger people used "adult" education too. Among my peer group at the time it was quite common for 16-18 year olds to do evening classes to re-take O levels or to take extra A levels alongside daytime school/college.

In the 90s just before AE was scrapped, I taught accounting at our local college by evening classes and I'd say over half my class was younger people doing "extras" alongside their school/college course or recent school/college leavers.

It provided an opportunity to retrain as well.

Pit villages had very high unemployment. Once the pits closed so did all the shops because people had fuck all to spend.
There are no fees for a school leaver going to college to do hair and beauty or tourism

Where I lived all the industry had closed down and youth unemployment was very high. I ended up moving away as it seemed impossible to build a successful life there.