Wise Owls is an important research body specialising in Age and Employment. We have carried out research for a series of high profile clients including the Learning and Skills Council and for the European Social Fund.

Our research is ongoing and most recently our Ageism in the Public Sector research project featured on the BBC’s Panorama programme. Our monitoring of the public sector continues alongside our efforts to lobby government to take up the duty themselves of monitoring employment in the public sector by age. We are encouraging others to participate by asking people to contact their local council using the FOI Act to obtain statistics on redundancies and recruitment by age. We are also producing collective research as the lead body in the Pan-European Older Person’s Learning & Employment Network.

If you would like us to conduct research for your organisation then please contact us to discuss what you may need to undertake - Contact us - To see view all our research projects then click on Archive Research in the side bar.

In addition we have a series of key facts that explain quickly the situation in Age and Employment within the UK and in Europe with a sample below.

Overview of UK statistical data

Employment
  • In 2010, 25.85% of the UK’s workforce was made up of over 50s
  • This is at its highest in last 10 years a increase of 3.66% from 2000
  • This is nearly twice as fast as the growth in the percentage of the population made up of over 50s, 1.39%
  • 72% of over 50-64 year old men and 58% of 50-64 year old women are currently in employment, (July 2010)
  • 12% of men and 7% of women over 65 are in employment, (July 2010)
Unemployment
  • There are currently 384,000 unemployed over 50s in the UK, 4.5% of the total over 50 population, (Nov 2010)
  • This is lower than at the same point last year, 4.7% in November 2009
  • However, it is higher than in 2008 when the unemployment rate for over 50s was 3.6%
  • The rate of unemployed over 50s for men is slightly higher than for women, 5.6% compared to 3.1%
Redundancy
  • In 2010, 26.53% of the UK’s redundancies have been aged over 50
  • This is at its highest point in the last 10 years 
  • And up 4.17% from last year
  • The redundancy rate in the public sector was much higher than the national average, with 66% of all redundancies in County councils and 57% of redundancies in London Borough councils being over 50.

Other key research organisations:

Prime

Age UK

Age and Employment Network

Office of National Statistics