May 11, 2017
Three quarters of people expect to work beyond the age of 65, claims report 0
For all the talk about the growing number of Millennials at work, most of the interesting stuff about workplace demographics appears to be happening at the other end of the age scale. A record number of employees now expect to work past the official retirement age and many expect to work up to the age of 85, according to a new study by Canada Life. It claims that 73 percent of UK employees will work past the age of 65, up from 67 percent in 2016 and 61 percent in 2015. More than a third (37 percent) of these could be older than 70 before they retire and 10 percent expect to be at least the age of 85 when they retire, if they can retire at all. Younger workers are particularly likely to expect to work past the age of 65, rising to more than four in five (84 percent) of 25-34 year olds. Many expect to be unable to afford to retire but a growing number will continue to work because they want to.
Two-fifths (40 percent) of UK workers have suffered high workloads or felt burnt out during the past 12 months a new survey claims and six million people in the country are losing sleep over work issues on a weekly basis – more than the entire population of Scotland. According to research from 
If UK businesses are to remain competitive whoever wins the election on 8 June needs to invest in skills and career advice, as Brexit uncertainty means people are hesitating to move jobs, while there may be barriers in future to hiring workers from abroad; according to the latest research into the UK jobs market by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC). The jobs market experienced the steepest drop in candidate availability for 16 months in April while demand for permanent and short-term staff remained high. Although growth in permanent starting salaries edged down to a four-month low in April, it remained sharp overall and stronger than the series average. Meanwhile, hourly pay rates for short-term staff increased at the sharpest pace in 2017 so far. Vacancies continued to rise markedly in April for both permanent and temporary/contract staff. This was despite growth in demand for both types of staff softening slightly since the previous month.
The majority of UK employees recognise the importance of data literacy to their career progression, but half have never been offered any relevant training. Statistics from a study of over 3,000 UK employees shows they understand the growing significance of data within their organisation, with almost all (94 percent) of those surveyed stateing that they consider data to be important for performing their role. Data skills were ranked as fourth in a list of the most important skills for their job – with only traditional, ‘soft’ skills such as ‘communication’, ‘organisation’ and ‘people management’ ranking higher. Yet the Censuswide survey, commissioned by Tableau revealed that despite four in five professionals (84 percent) believing data skills will be important for their career progression and a similar percentage (83 percent) using data on a weekly basis as part of their role, nearly half (49 percent) say their employer hasn’t offered them any kind of data analytics training.
As alarm grows in some circles over the impact of technology on future job prospects, a new survey suggests that Millennial’s jobs are likely to be at lower risk of automation. Research into how different generations choose jobs by jobs site Indeed compared the online search patterns of millions of UK jobseekers over the six months to March and found that younger people are substantially more likely to choose roles deemed to be at lower risk of automation. Nearly half of younger jobseekers were drawn to automation-resistant jobs, compared to fewer than four in 10 over-50s. These baby boomers are two thirds more likely than millennials to seek the manual jobs at highest risk of automation. While nearly half of millennials (48 percent) were searching for what economists term ‘non-routine’ roles, 61.1 percent of baby boomers were looking for ‘routine’ jobs. Routine jobs – which include sales, admin, transport and construction roles – are seen as being at higher risk of automation than non-routine work, which includes management, professional and service roles.
