Older people's 'jobs market' is robust

OK so maybe I chose the wrong word when I said finite but there are a limited number. If people don't free up jobs by retiring where are the jobs for the younger people to come from. I'm not saying people should be forced to retire but neither should they feel obliged to work. When you've worked for 40 years you've earned your retirement if that's what you want.

To pay for all those things we take for granted in a modern society, health service, education, roads, fire service, police, guarding our borders, looking after British Nationals abroad, pensions, social security, etc etc.

Its all to do with the consevative attitude that we should all be financially responsible for ourselves, which is fine and dandy but then why do they take a massive chunk of money each month from our wage packet.

There are not a finite number of jobs, if that was so most of the population would be unemployed. If we had stuck with the number of jobs we had 50 years ago think of all the increased population and women who would be jobless. Generally speaking the number of jobs in the economy has been growing steadily for 100s of years. Occupations come and go, very few butchers, bakers and candlestick makers now (although numbers are growing) hundreds of thousands of supermarket employees, and those working in IT. DH and I both worked in branches of our profession that didnt exist when we left school, DD has worked in two different professions, neither of which existed when she left school. In the short term numbers do fluctuate, but long term the movement is ever upwards.

Anyway why should older workers always be picked on when jobs are in short supply. They have every right to work for their livings as anybody else, why not say that mothers of children under 5 should stay at home or that men between 35-40 should stay at home. Every one should have an equal right to work.

What we could have done without is a government whose laissez-faire attitude to finance and banking helped to get us into this economic mess and another government that thinks you can increase your crop by eating the seed corn.

I don't understand how people not retiring does not affect unemployment in the younger age groups. Surely there are a finite number of jobs.

Exactly phoenix! Makes you cross to read it!

Perhaps they think we could all survive on the pay of a dinner lady? Or a tesco checkout worker?

No disrespect to any of those, but the pay is hardly a living wage.

So how is it that I'm still looking for a job?