Scrapping work after age 55 is most common in Luxembourg

Baby boomers in Luxembourg are the European Union's leaders for scrapping the workplace grind before they reach retirement age.

The Grand Duchy has the EU's lowest percentage of workers aged between 55 and 64, the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat said on Wednesday.

Luxembourg is one of 10 countries in the EU where 65 is the legal retirement age for pension eligibility. Nine other countries have a higher retirement age and seven allow people to retire younger. The retirement age in Sweden is flexible between 62 and 68 years.

Only 44% of people in the 55 to 64 age bracket in Luxembourg had a job last year, meaning that more than half are retiring before age 65 or were not previously working, Eurostat reported. Romania, Croatia and Greece were the only other EU countries where less than half of people in that age range were employed.

An average of six out of 10 EU workers born in the 1950s or '60s stayed on the job to age 65, Eurostat said. Sweden and the Czech Republic had the highest percentage of the nearing-retirement cohort still working, at around 77% and 75% respectively.

Almost 80% of people between 20 and 54 years old in Luxembourg have a job, above the 76% EU average.

Luxembourg had the EU's broadest gap between the percentages of Baby Boomers and younger workers in the workplace, with Luxembourg natives much more likely than foreign-born residents to eschew the office. 

Across the EU, 20% of older workers were in professional positions, 16% were technicians and 15% worked in shops or services. The rest worked in more than a half dozen job categories from machine operators to legislators.

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