Work and employment scholars Russell Lansbury and Marian Baird have written an engaging, stimulating, and short book (in the Routledge Focus series) on what people get up to when they cease the kind of work they have engaged in for most of their adult lives. The third member of the team, Ron Callus, sadly passed away in 2023 before the project was finished, and the book is dedicated to him.

The book blends review and comment on quantitative survey data, most notably from HILDA (the Australian longitudinal survey of households, income, and labour dynamics), in-depth qualitative interviews with retirees, and policy prescription. The main focus is retirement in Australia, but this is enriched by international comparisons and a particular focus on Sweden.

The authors write about ‘retiring’ rather than ‘retirement’ because the latter implies both passivity (non-work) and a one-off event that leads to a very different state from the one that preceded it. Instead, they view their subject as a process that can take place over an often-protracted period of time. Retirement can be seen as a continuum between reduced participation in the paid workforce and leaving it altogether.

The book highlights several important changes that have taken place in recent years. One is the removal of a mandatory retirement age for most occupations in Australia and elsewhere, leading to greater variability in retirement. Second, as is also common elsewhere, the age of eligibility for the state pension has been raised recently (from 65 to 67), reflecting the fiscal pressures emanating from increases in life expectancy and the proportion of the population aged 65 years or above. Three, after some falls in the 1970s and 1980s, the average age of retirement in Australia has increased (from 59 in 2010 to nearly 65 in 2022), with the labour force participation rate of those aged 60–65 years increasing by over 20 per cent between 2000 and 2020. At the same time, there is growing variation between those who retire before and after 65 years of age.

The authors highlight variations in retirement experience between social class/occupational groupings. Those in professional careers tend to be retiring later and are more likely to work part-time after formal retirement. HILDA shows that the most important reason for retirement amongst white-, pink-, and blue-collar workers is ill health, whereas professionals and managers attach broadly similar importance to being able to afford to retire, to gain more leisure time, and to being fed up and stressed. Unsurprisingly, professionals are more comfortable financially than blue-collar workers in retirement. There are also striking health differences between occupational groups, with 60 per cent of former blue-collar employees reporting long-term health problems during retirement, compared with just over a third of former managers and professionals.

It will come as no surprise that there are also pronounced differences in retirement experiences between the sexes. Women tend to retire earlier than men but have much smaller financial resources: on average; their superannuation accounts (occupational pensions) have less than a third of those of males. Class and gender intersect such that women who have had blue-collar careers are more likely to report that they are poor and just ‘making ends meet’ in retirement.

Chapter 4 provides a brief summary of the Swedish experience of retirement. To my surprise, Swedish workers retire later on average than workers in most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. More in keeping with my expectations, flexible working practices mean that older workers can change to less demanding jobs and reduce their working hours whilst accessing the state pension (in whole or in part), thereby facilitating older working. The result is that older workers keep working not because they need the money but because they find work meaningful, worthwhile, and sociable.

Chapter 5 turns to individual accounts of retiring and retirement drawing on rich qualitative data. Even with a small sample, there is a substantial diversity of experiences, though a common theme is the challenge of adjusting to retirement. The chapter identifies several career types (‘late starters’, ‘modestly ambitious’, and ‘high achievers’); future research, possibly larger scale, might further explore the relationship between career trajectories and retirement experiences (and gender, social class, and financial resources).

The next chapter follows up on this, again drawing on rich interview data, with respondents indicating that financial resources, good health, and good social networks contribute to a good retirement. Unsurprisingly, those who had professional and managerial careers are most likely to benefit from these, but despite these advantages, they do not display significantly higher levels of happiness than other groups.

In the final chapter, Lansbury and Baird consider the interaction between former or continuing careers and new post-retirement activities and interests. Based on the experience of their interviewees, they identify four groups using a matrix approach. ‘Stayers’ maintain a strong engagement with their previous career, whilst ‘leavers’ replace their previous career with new interests. ‘Blenders’ do a bit of both, whilst the ‘disengaged’ neither maintain involvement with their previous career nor develop new interests. Intuitively, this typology seems to work, and I can certainly slot each of my retiring contemporaries into one of these boxes. My anxiety is that I may be a ‘stayer’ when I would like to be a ‘blender’. As in all 2 ×2 matrices, the boundaries between each category are not ‘hard and fast’, and individuals may move between them. Future research might consider career type and other antecedents of these choices.

The final pages turn to policy recommendations to promote happier retirements. Improving retirement income inevitably looms large, with Lansbury and Baird arguing for a higher replacement rate for the state pension (as the sole source of retirement income for a large number of Australians despite the ‘superannuation guarantee’ since the 1990s). Currently, a minority of retirees have access to funds from superannuation, and there are pronounced gender differences in fund balances. Lansbury and Baird also argue for greater appreciation of the role of ill health in bringing about retirement and its impact on retirement experiences, although the appropriate policy prescriptions are less clear-cut. Finally, they argue for greater support for social institutions that facilitate social engagement.

The main takeaways from the book for me are the gender and social class differences in experiences post-retirement and the indeterminacy of retirement. The authors highlight the heterogeneity of transitions from work to retirement, such that it is not always obvious when ‘retirement’ actually takes place. Is it when an individual accesses their state or occupational pension, when they cease their career occupation, when they substantially reduce their working hours, or when they cease all forms of paid work? Unlike in previous generations, these events do not necessarily occur simultaneously. This book highlights these complexities and provides an empathetic and insightful account of the rich variations in experiences as older people undergo these changes to their lives.