There has been a significant increase in the number of people aged between 55 and 64 continuing to work.
The NSO said people in that age bracket constituted 48.4 per cent of the labour force in 2017. That was a 12.1 percentage point increase from the 36.3 per cent in 2012.
But it was still well below the EU average of 60.6 per cent.
The increase was slightly higher for women than for men, with the men’s rate increasing 11.7 per cent and the women’s by 12.4 per cent. However, the number of women working remains much lower: only 30.6 per cent, compared to 66.1 per cent for men, an activity gender gap of 35.5 per cent.
OTHER FIGURES
• 6% of employees work on a fixed-term contract basis, compared to 14.3% in the EU
• 8.7% of all employees would like to work more hours, particularly part-timers (14.9%) compared with full-timers (7.7%)