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How much pressure is there for older chemists to retire?

Do you find that there is pressure for older chemists to retire, even if they are skilled and productive, so that younger people can be trained?

If there is such pressure, do you think it is more about one's biological age or more about one's "career age" (how long they worked in the field of chemistry)? Does it matter to a company if an employee decides to work from 28 to 70 versus from 35 to 77?

As someone who started PhD a later age, and is considering doing a postdoc, I want to know how much biological age would be an issue if I am to ultimately go to industry. Would I be fine as long as I am skilled and able to stay healthy?

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

In the UK it's illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of age, and there have actually been a few lawsuits about this (which were won) in the news in the last few years of people who were discriminated against on this basis suing their employers for discrimination on the basis of age. So although as indicated by these cases it does sometimes happen, you do have legal recourse if it does.

I think what's more likely is that someone at age 72 will want to retire rather than work another 5 years, since they will be able to at that age anyway and claim their pension! In fact most of the people I have worked with who have been coming up to retirement age (60 onwards) have been more or less counting down the years until they can retire and don't have to work anymore :smile:

So I think in either case, there's not much point trying to plan your career for when you're in your 60s and 70s now - as by the time you get to that point, your priorities may have changed!