Adult care workers at the upper end of the 'third age' (60-75) in England

The 'New Deal' Labour policies in the UK have the explicit aim of reducing unemployment among older workers, and older people's participation in the labour force has increased during the past decade or so. In this issue of the Social Care Workforce Periodical (SCWP) we aim to investigate empirical data on the current stock of older workers in the adult social care sector in England, identified through the NMDS-SC, December 2009 release using 80,041 individual workers' records. Here the aim is to focus on a particular group of this 'third age', those aged 60 to 75, and compare their characteristics and profile to the younger cohorts aged 50-55 and 55-60 years, so as to examine the changing profile among these three closely related groups.