Work | The State of Ageing 2025

What does the chart show?

• There is little difference between the UK and Iceland, the Netherlands and Switzerland in their employment rate of ‘prime age’ 25 to 54-year-old workers.
• The employment rate of workers who are younger and older than the ‘prime age’ group is substantially lower in the UK than in these other countries. The rate for people aged 55 to 64 is 75% in the Netherlands and Switzerland and 81% in Iceland compared with just 65% in the UK.  

We also know that:

• Because Iceland, the Netherlands and Switzerland have significantly higher employment rates of people aged under 25, the government has sensibly launched a ‘youth guarantee’ to improve the employment rate of younger workers.
• The government will not reach its 80% target without equal effort to improve the employment rate among people aged 55 to 64, but this older age group has not been singled out for intervention under current plans.  

What does the chart show?

• In 2016, before the state pension age was raised to 66, employment rates declined gradually from the age of 60 to state pension age.
• In 2024, following increases to the state pension age, employment rates were much higher among people in their early sixties than they had been in 2016, and they remained higher up to the age of 70.
• While the state pension age increase has encouraged more people to work into their mid-sixties, the steep decline in employment rates after 63 shows there is still a long way to go if we want to genuinely extend ‘working age’ into the mid-to-late sixties.  

We also know that:

• The poverty rate of 65 year olds doubled at the last increase in state pension age so, without concerted efforts to improve employment outcomes for people in their sixties, we can expect the imminent increase in state pension age to 67 to have further ramifications for poverty levels in this age group.  
• Currently 1.1 million working age people aged 60  and over are living in poverty – almost a quarter (23%) of this age group. This is the second highest rate of poverty among working-age adults. The highest rate (25%) is among people aged 16 to 24. 

What does the chart show?

• Despite the state pension age being equalised in 2018 and raised for both men and women from 65 to 66 in 2020, employment rates for women remain consistently lower than those for men.
• Among people aged 50 and over, the employment rate gap between men and women is most pronounced from the age of 63 to 66, showing a pronounced divergence in workforce participation as people approach and surpass state pension age. 

We also know that:

• The gender employment rate gap varies between different ethnic groups. Only 20% of Bangladeshi women, 29% of Pakistani women and 55% of Chinese women aged 50 to 64 are employed compared with 65%, 68% and 70% of men with these ethnic backgrounds.
• The reasons why women leave the workforce are also significantly different. Women aged 45 to 60 are seven times more likely than men in this age group to have left or considered leaving work before state pension age to care for children or grandchildren (15% compared with 2%). 

What do the charts show?

• Regional employment rates for people aged 50 to 64 mirror the overall ‘working age’ (16 to 64 in this data) employment rate for these regions. The key factor in the chances of a person aged 50 and over getting a job is whether there are jobs for people of any age.  
• The South East region has the highest overall employment rate (79%) and also the highest employment rate of people aged 50 to 64 (75%). Similarly, the North East has the lowest overall employment rate (71%) and the lowest employment rate of people aged 50 to 64 (66%). 

We also know that:

• Below this broad regional level, there is significant variation between places within regions, although the data is not strong enough to paint a truly accurate picture. As the Local Government Association has noted, areas with very different levels of employment opportunities can be cheek by jowl with one another.
• Living close to a place with plenty of employment opportunities does not always mean that people have access to them if transport links are poor. And moving for work becomes less possible as we go through different life stages. Geographic mobility declines with age, and people aged 45 and over are the least likely to relocate for work.
• Just as employment opportunities are not evenly distributed across the country, neither is the population. This means that there are large numbers of people who need support to return to work in populous places with relatively high employment rates. Almost one in five (19%, 416,000) of all the people in England aged 50 to 65 who are ‘involuntarily workless’ (out of work for reasons other than retirement) live in London, which has fairly high employment rates, while 15% (335,000) live in the South West.  

What does the chart show?

• Across the country the employment rates of people aged 50 to 65 lag behind those of people aged 35 to 49.  
• This employment rate gap or ‘age penalty’ is widest in the North East (19.8 percentage points) followed by London (19.1 percentage points).  
• The smallest gaps are in the North West (11.6 percentage points) and the South East (13.9 percentage points). 

What does the chart show?

• The great majority of workless people aged 50 to 65 (40.5%) identify sickness as their main reason for not working, closely followed by retirement (30.8%).  
• A smaller percentage of people aged 50 to 65 than those aged 35 to 49 are unemployed or inactive because they are caring for a home or family (12.2% compared with 34.4%). 

We also know that:

• Of the 3 million people who are currently out of work (unemployed or inactive) with a long-term health condition, more than half (53%, 1.6 million) are aged 50 to 65.
• More than half a million people aged 50 to 65 who are economically inactive say they would like to work. Of these people, 348,000 are out of work due to sickness or disability. This suggests there is a significant number of people who would be willing to return to the workforce if the right jobs and support were available (see our technical report for more details). 

What does the chart show?

• Although some parts of the country have a reputation for being places to retire to, there is no obvious correlation between the number of people aged 50 to 65 living in a region and the proportion of them who are retirees. However, there are notable regional differences in the reasons people give for being out of work.
• Just one in four people aged 50 to 65 in the South East (25%) and North West (24%) who are out of work are out of work because they are retired, compared with one in three people in the South West (33%).
• The South West has the lowest percentage (33%) of people aged 50 to 65 who are out of work due to their health while the North West has the highest percentage (50%).
• Most people aged 50 to 65 who are not working are classed as economically inactive, which means they are not actively looking for a job or able to work. But almost one in ten (9%) workless people aged 50 to 65 in the South East are unemployed, which means they are looking for a job and are able to work, compared with 4% in the East of England.

What does the chart show?

• The employment rate of people aged 50 to 64 in the government’s economic inactivity trailblazer areas is consistently below the England average. The lowest rate is in York and North Yorkshire (64%).
• The data suggests that the trailblazer areas are the places where there is most need to improve opportunities for workers in their fifties and sixties but the government’s trailblazer strategy will only succeed if they also take specific action within their wider plans to target and support people aged 50 to 64. 

What does the chart show?

• The disability employment gap (the difference between the employment rates of Disabled and non-disabled people) widens with age.  
• Among non-disabled people aged 50 to 65, 82% are in work compared with 46% of Disabled people in this age group. This is a gap of 35 percentage points compared with about 25 percentage points for people aged 25 to 49.
• Disabled people aged 25 to 34 have an employment rate of 64%, so around two in three Disabled people aged 25 to 34 are employed compared with fewer than half  (46%) of Disabled people aged 50 to 65.

We also know that:

• Although people aged 50 and over are more likely to have multiple, long-term health conditions than younger people, they are not substantially more likely to describe their health conditions as ‘work limiting’. A little more than half (56%) of people aged 60 to 65 who have a long-term health condition describe it as work limiting compared with 52% of those aged 35 to 49. This suggests that it is not simply poor health driving the higher disability employment gap for older workers – there is also an age effect at play.

What does the chart show?

• The disability employment gap (the difference between the employment rates of Disabled and non-disabled people) for people aged 50 to 65 is widest in northern regions.
• The widest gap is in the North East where just 37% of Disabled people aged 50 to 65 are employed compared with 79% of non-disabled people. This means that Disabled people in this age group are only half as likely to be in work as non-disabled people in the region, which indicates that creating more accessible employment is particularly critical in some parts of the country. 

What does the chart show?

• The success rate of the government’s Work and Health Programme, which helps people out of work and claiming unemployment benefit find and retain employment, falls substantially from the age of 35 onwards.  
• For people aged 55 to 59, the programme’s success rate is 15 percentage points lower than for those aged 30 to 34 (25% compared with 40%), while for people aged 60 and over, the success rate is only 20% – half as good as for those aged 30 to 34. 

We also know that:

• The situation is compounded by the fact that employment support programmes struggle to engage older workers. Just one in ten people aged 50 to 64 who are out of work engage in back-to-work support.
• Workers aged 45 to 54 are nearly twice as likely as those aged 16 to 24 to remain stuck in insecure work (48.8% compared with 28.2%), experiencing unpredictable pay and working hours/patterns or lacking access to employment rights and protections.
• More age-positive, age-curious and age-targeted interventions – from both the government and employers – would engage and support older workers effectively. 

What does the chart show?

• Of the 4.3 million self-employed workers in the UK, more than 2 million (49%) are aged 50 and over.  
• Almost one in five (17%) workers aged 50 to 65 are self-employed. Among workers aged 66 and over, the percentage is 37%, the highest of any age group.  

We also know that:

• Self-employment can put people at greater risk of being under-pensioned or receiving less-than-average income from pensions. 

What does the chart show?

• People in their fifties and sixties were driving the country’s employment rate growth until the pandemic, which appears to have brought this progress to a halt.  
• While the employment rates of people aged 35 to 49 and 65 and over seem to have recovered since the pandemic – and have now surpassed their pre-pandemic peaks – the rate for those aged 50 to 64 continues to lag behind and has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Note that there are issues with the accuracy of Labour Force Survey data that have worsened since late 2019 (see our technical report for more details).