Martin Hawes: financial adviser on the number of Kiwis working past the age of 65

New data shows a significant number of Kiwis are working past the retirement age.

A new report from Stats NZ shows there are almost 200,000 New Zealanders aged 65 or older that are still in the workforce.

This research also reveals at least 1200 Kiwis in their 90's are still working.

Financial adviser Martin Hawes says many of these people will need the extra money - and plenty are just used to working.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brad Olsen coming very shortly on the cherry export boom
that we're experiencing. Jamie mckaye joins us in Indebrady in
the UK, where the labor government is reportedly apparently eyeing
up cuts to the school lunch program. Quite ironic right now.
Data shows that kiwis continue to work well past the
age of retirement sixty five in New Zealand. This is

(00:22):
Stats and Z data out today Reports says two hundred
thousand senior citizens are still in the workforce. More interestingly,
twelve hundred people still working hard today are in their nineties.
Martin Hawes is a financial advisor and author of Retirement Ready.
He's with me tonight, Hi, Martin, Yeah, Hi, they're Ryan.

(00:44):
That's wonderful actually to hear twelve hundred ninety plus year
olds in the workforce.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, yes, it is. I'm you know, I'm not sure.
They won't be working full time. They won't the hours
a week or forty hours a week. You know, a
lot of them will probably be professionals who you know,
they toddle back into the office, you know, once a
week or so to have a look and act as
a consultant or something. To the firm. Some of them

(01:12):
will be self employed, they'll be doing clerical work. That
could be the odd taxi driver, but not terribly many
of them. I wouldn't think, yeah, but I think it's wonderful. Actually,
the whole trend of people working after a time at
age is absolutely huge. The figure I really like to

(01:33):
look at is that in nineteen eighty seven, thirteen percent
of people aged sixty five to sixty nine were working.
In twenty twenty four, that figure had jumped from thirteen
percent to forty eight percent, So almost the majority of
sixty five to sixty nine year olds are working in
so called retirement.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Question is why. I mean, obviously there's health will have improved,
and access to medical care, Cetera's improved. But people working
because they have to or because they want to keep contributing.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I think there's the four main reasons. And the first
one is, as you say, it's the money. A lot
of people need the money. It's probably the majority. I
think I have seen a figure on that at some stage,
but not a recent one. And you know, the extras,
a little bit of money for say, you know, fifteen
or twenty hours a week or something like that. Makes
a really big difference to the lifestyle and retirement. Sometimes

(02:28):
it's the only person who can do the job. You know.
So Madge has done the books for a company for ages.
She knows how it's done, and everybody wants around saying, god,
Madge doesn't look retire, and so she feels pressure and
she carries on doing it. Sometimes it's owning a business
like you know, farmers and and lots of other small businesses.

(02:52):
But also and I fit into this category because I'm
seventy two and I'm still working. It's simply what they do,
you know, get up in the morning and I like
to look at what's going on in the markets overseas.
I like to look at what the geopolitic, the geopolitical
stuff has been going down it. You know, there's a

(03:13):
lot of other stuff that I like to do, but
I like I've always liked my work.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
And the routine of it as well. People often talk
about the routine of it. One of the interesting numbers
to come out of this is over sixty fives, there
are actually a lot of machinery operators. Ten percent of
those working over sixty five machinery operators. I don't imagine
this is hugely labor intensive stuff. Although we're not really sure,
but do you think what do you think is behind that?

(03:39):
Is that because perhaps they're the only ones left to
know how to operate the machine.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I did under that when I read it, and then
somebody else said that they may be managing the people
who are actually managing running the machines. So they may
not be hands on or you know, they may not
have an apron on to use the building term, but
they may be managing somebody else to do it and helping.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah. Interesting, Martin, keep up the good work at seventy two,
You're going strong, Martin Haaw's financial advisor. For more from
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