Retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for some. When I started Republic Resumes in Adelaide in 2007, about 10 per cent of my clients were retirees wanting to work part time or casually. There’s a lot more now. This story is from the ABC.
Jennie Deneefe didn’t know what to expect when, at 63, she permanently clocked off from her three-decade teaching career.
But she certainly wasn’t expecting her retirement to be more devastating than wonderful.
“I retired at the end of 2017 and 2018 was just the most awful, awful year,” she says.
After working a busy job and raising three children, retirement — which coincided with her children moving out of home — presented Ms Deneefe with an empty void.
“I couldn’t imagine the future. I wasn’t imagining the future with any purpose. I wasn’t a mother. I wasn’t a teacher. Who was I? What was I?” she says.
Things got so bad she found herself questioning, “What’s the point? Who would miss me? Why am I here? Why am I bothering?”
Jennifer Luke, career development and retirement researcher at the University of Southern Queensland, has interviewed around 50 Australians who have reached retirement age.
She says many people don’t actually take up retirement at that age, or enter retirement and soon want to return to some sort of paid or volunteer work.
The need for money can influence that decision, but Ms Luke says it’s not usually the most pressing concern.
“Financial [motivation] does factor in … but it’s never the number one,” Ms Luke tells ABC RN’s Life Matters.
“The number one that always came through was wanting to keep busy. And if it wasn’t keep busy, it was having that social inclusion. That was actually the biggest one of all.”
AGE PREJUDICE
But age prejudice is a major blocker for older people re-entering the workforce.
Age prejudice is like race prejudice. People’s judgements are skin deep.
Jacqueline Bradley describes feeling “demoralised, humiliated and … really quite embarrassed” about her failure to secure work after months of trying.
“A very good friend of mine said … he believed it may be my age,” the 61-year-old Tasmanian said. “I am not going to pretend to be who I am not. I have earnt every wrinkle and every grey hair on my head.”
“I am applying for call centre work, customer service, I can’t get any work in retail,” Ms Bradley said. “I keep failing, I’ve never had so many failures in my life.”
Ms Bradley has a background in customer service in real estate and car sales and has not been out of a job since she started working at 15.
In recent times she has begun training as a hotel receptionist.
“It’s really great I love it,” she said. “I think there is an absolutely huge opportunity for retraining women my age.”
A National Skills Commission report found that older people had far greater difficulty finding subsequent employment after becoming unemployed compared with younger Australians.
In February 2020, mature age people were unemployed for an average of 76 weeks, compared with 33 weeks for young people and 54 weeks for people aged between 25 and 54 years.
The chief executive of Council on the Ageing Tasmania, Craig Chadwick, blames ageism for the difficulty older Australians face in securing work after the age of 55.
“One in six employers openly admit to a bias about age,” he said.
He said the perception that older workers were not as capable was wrong.
“People of that age are usually at the peak of their powers they usually have the highest level of qualification and experience and skills … their value is immense,” he said.