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Older steelworkers: Many jobs cannot be carried out into old age
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Arno Burgi/DPA
In 2000, only ten percent of 60- to 64-year-olds were employed subject to pension insurance, recently it was more than 40 percent.
If many economists have their way, significantly more older people should soon be working to secure the pension system.
Many are calling for the regular entry age to be raised to 70.
However, the economic researcher Michael Hüther has another suggestion against the long-term decline in income from pension insurance.
He advocates a 42-hour week as standard working time.
The Director of the Employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW), on the other hand, considers the discussed raising of the retirement age to be politically difficult to implement.
He told the newspapers of the Funke media group.
Hours should be paid, it's not about wage cuts
In fact, the traffic light coalition was unable to agree on pension cuts or a higher retirement age.
Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) recently said that he thinks a flexible transition to retirement is right.
"But the idea that you should work in a steel mill or at the supermarket checkout, as a police officer or as a nurse up to 70, only people who live in a completely different world can have that."
According to the current legal situation, the age limit for the pension will be gradually raised from 65 to 67 years by 2029 without deductions.
According to experts, however, this will not be enough to permanently secure the financing of the pension.
The pension insurance had therefore recently shown itself open to a new debate about longer working.
IW boss Hüther, on the other hand, now says: »It takes the 42-hour week.
Of course, the hours are paid – it's not about cutting wages through the back door.« In Switzerland, two hours more are worked per week than in Germany, and in Sweden one hour more.
“If you add that up, you would compensate for the demographically induced loss of work volume by 2030.”
Possibly, longer weekly working hours compared to the higher retirement age could actually have advantages.
On the one hand, she took into account that certain physically demanding activities become more and more difficult to accomplish with increasing age.
On the other hand, it would meet the needs of many baby boomers from the baby boomer generation, preferring to get out sooner rather than later.
To what extent longer working hours can be coped with by the younger generations - and whether they will support this or then work part-time more often is an open question.
apr/dpa