Brussels – Jobs: those who would like to have them and those who don’t want to leave them (or sometimes can’t). Here is another two-speed Europe, as photographed by Eurostat in the curious data of retirees not in retirement in 2023. 13.2 per cent of men and women with an old-age pension check keep working, with rates exceeding 40 per cent in Finland (41.7 per cent), Lithuania (43.7 per cent), Latvia (44.2 per cent), and over 50 per cent in Estonia (54.9 per cent). This means that around Europe, there are tens of millions of jobs locked up by men and women who are not giving them up to young people and mainly doing so by choice, not economic need.

A helpful figure in this regard is that of Italy. Although in percentage terms, Italy has a lower-than-average rate of retirees at work (9.4 per cent), in absolute terms, this translates into more than 1.52 million wages paid to those already receiving pension checks. Between INPS (National Social Security Institute) and non-INPS schemes, more than 16.2 million people will have at least one pension check at the end of 2023. Result: 1.52 million “elderly stealing jobs from young people,” preventing them from entering the labour market. The reason? Largely the pleasure of doing so.

“Denmark (61 per cent), the Netherlands (59.6 per cent), and Italy (51.7 per cent) have the highest percentage of people who continue to work because they like doing it,” notes the European Statistics Institute. A way of doing things, tolerated by business and politics, that only fuels that unvirtuous all-Italian circuit whereby college graduates do not find employment and leave the country. 

How does it work in other countries? You have to look for data. It turns out that in Germany there are, at the end of 2023, 16.4 million retirees, and 12.8 per cent of them keep their jobs. Translated: 2.09 million experienced immovable workers. While France’s rate of 9.9 per cent, applied to a pool of 15,3 million di pensioners, results in a similar but still lower number than Italy’s: 1.51 million.

English version by the Translation Service of Withub