Understanding older worker precarity: the intersecting domains of jobs, households and the welfare state

David Lain,Sarah Vickerstaff,Wendy Loretto,Laura Airey

doi:10.1017/s0144686x18001253

David Lain, Sarah Vickerstaff + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/s0144686x18001253

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Abstract

AbstractIn policy debates it is commonly claimed that older workers are entering a period of choice and control. In contrast, Guy Standing's book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class, published in 2011, argues that older people are increasingly joining the ‘precariat’, by taking low-level jobs to supplement dwindling pension incomes. We argue that many older workers, not just those in ‘precarious jobs’, feel a sense of ‘ontological precarity’. Pressures to work longer, combined with limited alternative employment prospects and inadequate retirement incomes, give rise to a heightened sense of precarity. We develop a new theoretical model for understanding precarity as a lived experience, which is influenced by the intersection between precarious jobs, precarious welfare states and precarious households. This model is then illustrated using qualitative research from two organisations in the United Kingdom: ‘Local Government’ and ‘Hospitality’. In both organisations, older workers experienced a sense of ontological precarity because they worried about the long-term sustainability of their jobs and saw limited alternative sources of retirement income. Household circumstances either reinforced interviewees’ sense of precarity, or acted as a buffer against it. This was particularly important for women, as they typically accrued smaller financial resources in their own right. Our concluding discussion builds on this more advanced theoretical understanding of older worker precarity to call for a rethinking of state and employer support for decisions around later-life working and retirement.

Highlights

In the United Kingdom (UK) and other Anglo-Saxon countries it is increasingly argued that we are entering a period of choice and control with regard to work in later life
This paper argues that in order to understand fully the lived experience of precarity amongst older workers in the UK, it is necessary to extend our focus beyond employment, and consider other aspects of individuals’ socio-economic circumstances
We examine the intersecting influences of precarious jobs, precarious welfare states and precarious households upon older workers’ sense of ‘ontological precarity’ in the UK

Summary

Introduction

In the United Kingdom (UK) and other Anglo-Saxon countries it is increasingly argued that we are entering a period of choice and control with regard to work in later life. In the UK, policy makers depict working longer as taking control and ‘reinventing retirement’ (Altmann, 2015; Cridland, 2016). In his interim review of UK State Pension ages, for example, John Cridland (2016) highlights the fact that older people are disproportionately self-employed and/or part-time, relative to younger workers, and argues that moves into these types of employment represent the development of attractive pathways into extended working lives. Whether or not people do move into part-time work and self-employment, and if so, whether this is the result of genuine choice, is not empirically examined in Cridland’s report ( see Van der Horst et al, 2017)

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