The High Commission for Strategy and Planning has presented its recommendations to enable employed people to work “longer in good conditions”.
(illustration) (AFP/PHILIPPE GUGEN)
“For sustainable job retention, action needs to be taken well before careers end.” In a report presented on Wednesday 22 July, the High Commission for Strategy and Planning recommends doing more to ensure older people can remain in work while awaiting retirement.
Thus, the report notes that maintaining employment for older people after 60 years of age in France is not enough. The employment rate of older people in France has matched and even exceeded the European average for people aged 55–59, especially as retirement age has increased, but still remains significantly lower for people aged 60–64. “If the employment rate of older people increases, we will be left with the question of transitions between employment and retirement,” said Emmanuelle Proué, one of the report’s authors, during a press presentation.
“Creating Real Policy on Aging at Work”
“At 61, we still have more than one person in four who is not working and not retired, who has already left or who is not in the labor market and who cannot yet apply for a pension,” she explained. Among “low-skilled workers and jobs, nearly 40% of people will leave the labor market before they reach retirement age,” she added. Although retirement “will undoubtedly be later and later,” “we must ask ourselves a certain number of questions about working conditions, about the relationship between professional and retirement activities,” stressed High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning Clément Beaune.
Thus, the report identifies
two “central” levers
: Supporting the transition from employment to retirement, and enhancing learning throughout one’s career. Therefore, the authors urge
“develop real policies on aging at work that treat older people as workers whose career paths must be prepared, supported and secured over time, going beyond mere end-of-career management”
.
When it comes to vocational training for older people, “when we look at the situation in France, we see a double deficit – not only of investment, but also of access to training,” laments Eva Tranier, another author of the report. Between 2022 and 2024, “only a third of people aged 55–64 were trained in France, compared with more than one in two in Sweden and Denmark,” she illustrated.
As for progressive pension schemes, which allow the employer to compensate for the transition to part-time work from age 60, as well as labor accumulation and retirement, Mr. Bohn considers it important to “evaluate, stabilize” them. Although combining work and retirement will become much less attractive for people under 67 from 2027, the High Commissioner estimated that “we can question the relevance of this restriction” but added that “it would be even worse to change without even looking at the consequences of this reform.”