The employment rate for Finns aged 60 to 64 has more than doubled between 2002 and 2024, from 26 per cent to nearly 65 per cent, according to research from the Finnish Centre for Pensions (ETK).

The company’s indicator report noted that pension reforms, such as the 2017 reform that gradually raised the lowest age limit for retirement from 63 to 65 and introduced new pension benefits, have played a “key role” in the increase in people working for longer.

ETK head of the research department, Susan Kuivalainen, explained that raising the retirement age has improved employability and positively changed perceptions of the appropriate retirement age among both employees and employers.

“In addition, the increase in the level of education and improved work ability of those approaching retirement age have supported the lengthening of working careers. Longer working careers are also reflected in the increasing popularity of working during retirement,” Kuivalainen said.

The report also showed an increase in the employment rate in those aged between 65 and 69, from around 5 per cent to around 20 per cent.

Kuivalainen called the rise in employment rates in the sixties “quite a success story”.

She emphasised that this development is “important” in an ageing society where the working-age population is declining, and added that although the direction is right, further work is still needed to reinforce this development as careers “must be extended”.

Additionally, the research found that after the 2017 pension reform, the average working career length of those who took retirement fell but soon returned to its previous level.

In 2022, the average working career length increased to over 33 years because there was an “exceptionally high” number of people who took old-age pensions. However, in 2023, the number of people who took old-age pensions decreased significantly, as the share of those who took disability pensions among all retirees increased.

Last year, the upward trend returned as the average working career length increased by more than six months to 32.3 years.

In 2024, the median working career also increased by half a year (37.4 years), longer than the level before the pension reform.

For those who retired on disability pension, the working careers were on average just over 11 years shorter than those who retired on an old-age pension.

ETK also pointed out that the difference in the duration of men's and women's careers has narrowed over the past decade but noted that men's careers are still around a year longer.

The research concluded that the number of people working alongside taking an old-age pension was at its highest immediately after the commencement of old-age pension payments, at the age of 65–66. In these age cohorts, over 8,000 people were working in pension-earning work in December 2023.

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