Quarter of pensioners interested in finding a job

About a quarter of the growing group of retirees in the Netherlands are interested in returning to paid work, according to a study by researchers from Tilburg University, University of Groningen, and Nidi. After corrections for dropouts, that amounts to an unused labor potential of 200,000 people still being overlooked by employers struggling with growing staff shortages, the Financieele Dagblad reported.

A growing group of people wants to keep working after reaching retirement age. The exact number is hard to pinpoint because the retirement age is also increasing. Currently, it is 66 years and ten months. According to Statistics Netherlands, the net labor participation of 65- to 75-year-olds amounted to 17.1 percent last year. That is 333,000 workers out of 1.9 million people in this age group.

According to Ellen Dingemans of Tilburg University, Kene Henkens of the University of Groningen, and Nidi researcher Hanna van Solinge, there are approximately another 200,000 people between the ages of 65 and 80 who could be convinced to start working again with the right incentives. They surveyed a representative sample of 800 fully retired people and published their results in the economist journal ESB on Tuesday.

Nearly half of 66 to 69-year-olds said they’d consider returning to work under the right circumstances. The enthusiasm decreased with age, but one in three 75 to 79-year-olds would still consider paid work. The interest is almost twice as high among highly educated retirees than those with a lower level of education.

Because slightly more than 25 percent of people with plans to continue working actually persevere in practice, the researchers arrived at a labor potential of 10 percent. With 2.6 million 65 to 80-year-olds in the Netherlands, the vast majority of whom are fully retired, that is at least 200,000 potential workers.

Retirees’ primary condition for returning to work was that it should be fun. They’d also like to determine their own hours. And would like to be asked to come back to the labor market. In all cases, money was the least cited motive.