AGE Concern is calling on retired people in the Petersfield area to help it carry out a survey of the problems facing older people who cannot get jobs.

Chris Perry, director of Age Concern in Hampshire, said there were many people over 50 from all walks of life, with every conceivable qualification and a wealth of knowledge and experience, who would love to work.

ÒAge Concern has considerable anecdotal evidence of people with a proven track record of achievement not getting interviews for jobs they would have walked into some 20 or 30 years previously. With your help we wish to quantify this.Ó

ÒWe would like to hear from anyone who feels they have not been given an interview because of their age.Ó

He said Age Concern needed evidence that the application met both the essential and the desired criteria for the job.

ÒThe information will be held in the strictest of confidence and only used with the explicit permission of the person concerned.Ó

Mr Perry said that at a time when people were living longer and young people were settling down later, there was a skills shortage.

Yet one-third of men and women between 50 and the state pension age Ð some 2.8 million people nationally Ð were not in work.

ÒIn the past 20 years the proportion of men aged 50 to 65 not in work has doubled. There is talk of raising the age at which people are entitled to their state pension to 70,Ó he said.

Neither occupational nor state pensions were keeping pace with the growth in the economy or with earnings, interest rates were low and investments losing their value, and there were older people from all walks of life who wanted to work.