Germany should reform its employment policies and workplace practices to enable older people who wish to continue working to do so, according to a new OECD report.

Today, many older Germans stop working well before reaching the statutory retirement age of 65. As a result, only two out of five people in Germany between the ages of 55 and 64 are employed, well below the ratio in most other OECD countries. By comparison, about three out of five people in this age group are still active in Britain and the US and more than 70% in Sweden.
Unless this situation changes, Germany could face labour shortages, slowing economic growth and worsening public finances, the OECD report warns.
Specifically, the OECD recommends that Germany should :
raise the retirement age in line with rising life expectancy. While the OECD welcomes the incoming government's plans to raise the retirement age in the long term to 67, it says action may be needed earlier than in 2008, as currently planned. 

introduce job-search requirements for all, irrespective of age. Incentives to retire before the official retirement age or to withdraw from the labour market by taking advantage of disability pensions or unemployment benefits combined with exemptions from job-search requirements should be removed. 
improve the employability of older workers. Training programmes for older workers, especially for the low and medium-skilled, are urgently needed in order to help older workers who lose their jobs to find new employment.