Job mobility for older workers in semi-routine and routine occupations

The Institute for Employment Studies has been awarded funding by the Nuffield Foundation for a two-year research project.

We are investigating how job mobility helps older workers in routine and semi-routine jobs to extend their working lives. Compared to those in professional level occupations, these workers are more likely to need to work longer, due to being in lower paid jobs and having larger pensions deficits. Think of the cleaner or brickie, or health care assistant or auxiliary nurse, who’s knees have gone. Offer them a different job and it may be they can avoid having to take early retirement: job mobility can help them continue to work. And yet, they have fewer options and greater barriers to job mobility. So they are likely to face a double whammy: a greater need to extend their working lives, but fewer options to do so.

We are researching: first, the nature of mid-to-late career job mobility in routine and semi-routine occupations; second, the impact of this on extending working lives; and third, how this job mobility can be optimised. It’s mixed methods, with an evidence review, quant and qual. The quant analysis will use Understanding Society (UKHLS) data. The qual will analyse local systems, to understand how different actors in the economy interact to create barriers or solutions (for example, large anchor employers, SMEs, providers of skills and employment support). To enable that, we’re taking a place-based approach, centreing the study on the diverse economy of the Leeds City Region and involving the Leeds Anchor Network, which includes three NHS trusts. We anticipate implications for management and employment practice, and local, regional and national policy.