Behind our Let Pensioners Work campaign
This campaign is one of National Seniors Australia's biggest advocacy successes – and it was supported by our own research.
Anyone who knows anything about National Seniors knows we have fought hard to change pension rules about work during the past few years, with some success.
In 2022, the National Seniors Research Team surveyed thousands of older people about their work status and aspirations, including 1,249 retirees receiving the Age Pension.
We found that 16% of pensioners had already re-entered the workforce at some point in the past, and another 20% would consider re-entering in the future.
In both cases, the most common motivation was money, with 60% nominating this as a reason.
These statistics become the core of our campaigning, which has received nationwide media attention.
The research project was bigger than this though. We also asked survey participants what they thought were the barriers to post-retirement work.
Pension, tax, and/or superannuation rules were mentioned by 632 of the 3,067 respondents who wrote a comment about this.
But well and truly beating those barriers was the top response: ageism.
Almost 1,100 people directly mentioned ageism as a barrier, and a further 844 implied it in their comments.
While pension rules are, in theory, straightforward to change, ageism remains a hard nut to crack in this country. Our fight goes on.
To find out more, read the full report “If people want to work, they should be able to”: Older Australians’ Perspectives on Working After Retirement at nationalseniors.com.au/research/reports.
