Lack of retirement cap may stifle jobs

AN INFLUENTIAL City figure has branded the government's decision this week to scrap compulsory retirement at 65 as a misguided move that could squeeze the younger generation out of jobs and promotions.

Simon Culhane, chief executive of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), said the government was right to correct the unfair "nonsense" of enforced retirement at 65. But the CISI boss, pictured, said not incorporating a new cap, which he suggested should be 70, risked the "unintended consequence of the baby boomers becoming the job blockers".

Culhane, whose organisation is the biggest City of London examinations body and keenly attuned to financial firms' employment worries, said: "The pendulum has swung too far. Scrapping compulsory retirement at 65, with nothing in its place, will have an immediate and lasting detrimental effect on recruitment.

"If there are no leavers, then there will be no vacancies and therefore no joiners, so it will increase youth unemployment.

"Internal promotions will reduce, opportunities for career advancement will diminish as firms start to manage a new phenomenon, the job blocker."

Culhane said such a culture change, both in the City and wider society, "is likely to lead to some sort of friction between the generations".