Employment at Retirement Age

​Employment of persons 65+ stabilizes old-age provision and can alleviate the shortage of skilled workers. The project investigates the motives and enabling of 65+ employment.

Factsheet

  • Lead school School of Social Work
  • Additional schools School of Health Professions
  • Institute Institute on Ageing
  • Funding organisation BFH
  • Duration (planned) 01.04.2021 - 31.12.2024
  • Project management Prof. Dr. Peter Neuenschwander
  • Head of project Prof. Dr. Jonathan Bennett
  • Keywords ​labour market retirement employment aging 65plus

Situation

The aging of society is accompanied by a decline in the share of the population of people under the age of 65, which poses a challenge for pension systems and further exacerbates the already existing shortage of skilled workers in various occupational fields. Increasing the labor force participation of 65+ could, on the one hand, contribute to the stabilization of the financial provision for old age and, on the other hand, particularly in occupational fields with low mobility, alleviate the shortage of skilled workers. The ERA project contributes to understanding the motives, factors and obstacles to employment beyond the statutory retirement age. This serves the purpose of targeting the heterogeneous groups among the 65+ age group and to attract them to the labor market to a greater extent. With the consistent inclusion of international expertise on the one hand and the relevant stakeholders in Switzerland on the other, employer-side and legally regulated incentive structures are also analyzed and concrete improvement measures are proposed. A profession-specific focus is placed on the engineering professions, which are particularly affected by the shortage of skilled workers. Public events, which serve to inform and sensitize the public as well as the exchange between the various actors, are also an important part of the project.