Economic Activity of Elderly People

Abstract

The economic activity of the elderly is becoming increasingly important with the aging of the population and the extension of the education of young people. Older people have experience, knowledge, which is an important component of human capital of modern organizations and countries in general. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, according to statistics, the economic activity of the elderly has decreased significantly during the 2008-2018 period. Most elderly workers are among the specialists and representatives of the simplest professions. Data on the registered statistics of economic activity of elderly in the regions of Ukraine are weakly correlated with the situation on regional labor markets. This is due, in particular, to the significant shadow component of employment in this age group. There are both positive and negative aspects of economic activity of older people. Despite the benefits of using the labor of older people, they compete for jobs with people of active working age, their involvement is more expensive for employers. With this in mind, regulating the use of human resources of older workers is necessary to maintain the labor balance in the country as a whole, as well as in regions and individual organizations. The article determines which decisions of the elderly the state can influence: retirement earlier than the normal retirement period; exit after reaching this age; continuation of economic activity outside the retirement age, i.e later retirement. The tools of influencing the economic activity of the elderly are the pension system, the creation of jobs taking into account the interests of older workers, improving the quality of their work, combating age discrimination. It is shown that changes in the pension system of Ukraine in 2017 contribute to the intensification of economic activity of persons of pre-retirement and retirement age.