2012-12-13 19:18
Seoulites retire at 52.6
By Kim Rahn
The average age at which Seoul citizens retire is 52.6, according to a survey. The survey was conducted by the Seoul Welfare Foundation and published Thursday. By gender, women withdraw from workplaces earlier than men: the average retirement age for women is 49.7, with men at 54.6. The foundation conducted the survey on 1,000 citizens aged 55 or older between September and October. People interviewed aged 65 or above retire at 57.6 years old on average, while those aged between 60 and 64 do so at the age of 54.1 and those between 55 and 59, at 48.5. “There is great disparity between the actual retirement ages and the age at which people hope to retire, because another survey last year found that 57.4 percent of citizens expected to leave their jobs in their 60s,” said a city official. Despite the reality of early retirement, 62.2 percent said they hope to continue working, especially those aged between 55 and 59, because they are under pressure to survive economically. However, only 47.1 percent of people wanting to work are currently making money ― working at part-time jobs or in worse jobs than they had before retiring. “As the average retirement age is expected to continue getting lower, we’ll see a growing number of people in their early and middle 50s who want to hold down jobs,” the official said. Of the 99 people who found new jobs, 40 percent work in the service sector such as working in shops, while only 20 percent of them were engaged in the industries related to their previous jobs. “It is difficult for former white-collar employees, such as office workers or technicians, to find new positions in the industry they previously worked in. But they still wanted to find such specialized employment, so we need to develop jobs for elderly jobseekers with specific skills,” the official said. |
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