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In the past month, delaying retirement has once again become a national topic.

Although there is no official source for the topic of "Post-90s retire at 65",

But it triggered strong emotions among young people.

In today’s global economic downturn,

Temporary work has become a norm and trend.

Netizens are worried:

"Unemployed at 35, pension at 65,

How should we spend the downtime in between? "

Liang Jie, PhD in Economics and Associate Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, was interviewed by Yitiao

Yitiao talked with Liang Jie, associate professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

He is an economics scholar born in the 1980s.

Pay attention to delaying retirement for many years.

"China is currently facing low fertility rates and an aging population.

This is the fundamental reason for delaying retirement.”

He believes that "adjusting the retirement age to 65 years old

It’s an inevitable trend.”

In July this year, "voluntary and flexible" was listed as the principle of delaying retirement by the central government for the first time.

Liang Jie also talked about the possible negative impact of delaying retirement.

"There is a contradiction between delaying retirement and increasing the birth rate,"

"Unemployment and poverty among the elderly are also major issues that I am concerned about."

He believes that delaying retirement fundamentally requires supporting institutional reforms.

For example, we need to eliminate "age discrimination" in the labor market.

Improve the unemployment benefits system.

"Delaying retirement will definitely require a long buffer period."

Editor: Han Jiaqi

Editor: Chen Ziwen

A previously reported group retirement community

Q: One

A: Liang Jie

Q: What is the social background for delaying retirement in my country?

A：From a global perspective, delaying retirement is a trend. For example, in Hong Kong, China, and Japan, we often see elderly people driving taxis, some of whom are already 70 or 80 years old. The more developed a country is, the lower its birth rate and the longer its life expectancy, so the retirement age should be higher. Currently, in OECD countries, the average retirement age for men is 64.6 years old and for women is 63.9 years old. In the UK, for example, the pension age has been postponed to 66 years old.

The current retirement age in China is 60 for men and 50-55 for women. This was actually proposed in the 1950s. However, the nutrition and medical care, physical condition and life expectancy of people in the 1950s were actually very different from those of today.

Among OECD countries, the proportion of elderly workers in Japan and South Korea exceeds 10%.

In the central area of ​​Shanghai, the total birth rate has fallen below 0.6, and the aging problem is very serious.

But the most fundamental reason is the aging population that China is currently facing, which means a shortage of labor. I am from Shanghai and was born in a relatively central area of ​​Shanghai. The total birth rate is only about 0.6, which is lower than that of South Korea. Some primary schools have already been closed.

Raising the birth rate is actually a very difficult task worldwide. Therefore, if some elderly people aged 60 to 65 who are in good physical condition and have the ability to produce can continue to work, the challenge of insufficient labor can be alleviated.

So I think adjusting the retirement age to 65 is an inevitable trend, but it must have a long buffer period and be implemented in small steps.

Q: The current employment situation for young people is grim. Does delaying retirement mean that the jobs of middle-aged and young people will be further squeezed?

A：I think you should think about this question the other way around. Why do we need to delay retirement? It is because we are short of labor and there are many jobs that are not filled, so we need to delay retirement.

We need to look at unemployment from a broader perspective. There is systemic unemployment, structural unemployment, and short-term frictional unemployment. We should not simply attribute employment problems to jobs being taken by older people.

The 2016 Korean film "Miss Bacchus" discussed the issue of elderly poverty.

Q: What other impacts will delaying retirement have on us?

A: Let's take the economy as an example. Some economists have estimated that if retirement is delayed by one year at the age of 60, economic growth will increase by 0.2%. But you can't postpone the retirement age indefinitely. If it is postponed to 67 or 68, everyone's health will be very poor, which may be detrimental to the entire economy.

Delaying retirement may also have a negative impact on the fertility decisions of the next generation of young people. When young people in their twenties and thirties decide whether to have children, they will consider who will take care of them. If both my parents are working, it means that there will be no one to take care of the children in the future. Some scholars have done such research and found that if the retirement age is delayed by one year, the fertility rate will drop by 0.05 and the time for grandparents to take care of the elderly will drop by 0.9.

Elderly poverty and unemployment will also be a big problem in the future. Our laws and regulations need to have more restrictions on the dismissal of the elderly and age barriers. For example, if you are over 55 years old, you cannot register with a certain taxi app, but in Japan and South Korea, we can see many elderly drivers.

A reported "May" who was laid off at the age of 36 has now switched to being a home blogger and supports himself with his house

Q: Delaying retirement is to supplement the labor force, but judging from the current employment environment, the situation of "not being able to find a job" is relatively common. Why is it that "on the one hand, there is a shortage of labor, on the other hand, there is a shortage of labor"?

A：In labor economics, we often see an interesting phenomenon: labor shortage and surplus coexist. For example, in the 1990s, a large number of workers were laid off from textile factories, and then the Internet industry began to rise, requiring a large number of code writers. However, people from textile factories could not simply go to work at Internet companies, as they would find that their skills were not matched.

When a person's skills are transferred from one industry to another, or from one city to another, the transfer cost for workers can be very high.

For China, the manufacturing and service industries are still short of talent. The manufacturing industry lacks high-end talent who can handle complex machinery and equipment. For example, in today's aging society, there is still a lot of market space for caring for the elderly and improving their quality of life. The more caring work is, the more difficult it is to be replaced by AI.

A reported case of a programmer who switched to selling breakfast as a "sponge" reflects the phenomenon of "oversupply of academic qualifications"

Q: If the manufacturing and service industries are facing a labor shortage, does this mean that there is a mismatch between our current widespread “degree-granting” system and the actual job market demand?

A：In the short term, there will be an over-prosperity in education, but in a few years, I think people's attitude towards education will become more rational. Just like in the past, some people thought that the return rate of studying abroad was very high, but in recent years, people have begun to find that after investing 4 or 5 million yuan in a young person, the monthly salary after returning to China is only 7,000 yuan, and there is no way to earn back the money you invested.

For many employers, they may prefer to hire someone with three years of work experience rather than someone with a master's degree. So I think the postgraduate entrance examination seems to be slowly receding. In the future, the market will teach everyone that if you spend so much energy and money to get a diploma and don't get the corresponding return in the labor market, everyone's behavior will change.

A study shows that the participation rate of urban employees' basic pension insurance for flexible employment personnel in 2020 was only 28.5%

Q: Now more and more people are joining the ranks of flexible employment, but the insurance participation rate is very low. Does this mean that their future retirement will become a big problem?

A：Our current starting point for social security payments is indeed relatively high, and it is increasing at a very high rate every year, which creates a lot of pressure on people with flexibly employed jobs.

A high starting point for social security contributions is of course a good thing for retirees, especially those who have retired in recent years, whose pensions can suddenly start at a very high starting point. But for young people, they have to bear greater pressure. So I personally do not agree with raising the starting point for social security contributions very high.

In the movie "Reverse Life", Xu Zheng plays a programmer who was laid off by an Internet giant. After losing his job, he chooses to become a food delivery man to make a living.

Q: Will unstable employment become a trend?

A：If the entire society only pursues stable employment, there will be problems, because there will be no innovation, no motivation, and various "big pot" and free-riding phenomena; but for an unstable society, if there are no high returns and people are living from hand to mouth, then everyone will develop a disgust for instability.

In the current global economic environment, it may be difficult for us to find an economic system that is both stable and motivating people to work. I think it must be swinging between the two.

In recent years, economists in Western countries have proposed a very idealistic system - the basic income system, which provides a certain amount of basic income to every citizen every month. The amount is not high, but it can encourage you to achieve your ideals. However, if this system is to be implemented by all people in a country with a large population, the economic burden will be very heavy.

In 2023, the tertiary industry (including virtual economy) will account for about 54.6% of China's GDP. Economists believe that the tertiary industry still has a lot of room for development.

The "assembly line" workers in the data labeling factory do the simplest identification, labeling and editing work for artificial intelligence products, with a monthly salary of about 3,000 yuan

Q: Recently, driverless online ride-hailing vehicles have begun to be piloted in major cities across China, and the "online ride-hailing drivers will be replaced" has once again triggered public concerns about unemployment. Is there an economic estimate of what impact AI will have on the job market? Will the development of artificial intelligence alleviate the labor shortage?

A：Artificial intelligence will replace some jobs and create many new jobs. For example, for some small and micro enterprises, the emergence of ChatGPT has greatly reduced the cost of starting a business. For example, if I make a website, I have to find someone to write code and do design, and I have to pay them, but today ChatGPT can do it.

In the history of economics, we have many similar discussions. When trains replaced horse-drawn carriages, a large number of coachmen lost their jobs. However, as cars became more popular, we found that the jobs created by the automobile industry itself far outweighed the jobs of the coachmen it replaced.

A report on the 87-year-old Japanese grandmother Junko Iwamuro, who is a dumpling shop owner during the day and a nightclub DJ at night

Q: The biggest emotion of the public towards delayed retirement is perhaps not that they have to work after 60, but that they may be unemployed in their 40s or 50s and not be able to find a job, but can only receive a pension at 65. So how should people spend this long period of time?

A：Yes, I think the most core issue facing the entire delayed retirement system is that our entire labor market should give opportunities to people of different age groups. People in their 20s should be able to find jobs, and people in their 60s should also be able to find jobs, because people of different ages have different advantages, such as work experience, interpersonal relationships, and social experience.

I have always felt that age discrimination is a very serious problem in China today. Some discrimination is directly written in the recruitment process, requiring the age to be under 35 or 40 years old. Even in our universities, there is an age limit for applying for certain funds.

This is actually not allowed in many developed countries. I think it can be promoted in the law, at least to remove such blatant discrimination. It needs to be discussed all the time, and finally turn the opposition to discrimination into a psychological social consensus.

Q: Could you please introduce our country’s pension system?

A：There are two main ways for the state to pay for individual pensions: one is the pay-as-you-go system and the other is the fund system. The basic logic of the pay-as-you-go system is that the pensions of the current generation of retired elderly people are provided by young people who are still working. But when the population age structure changes dramatically, the burden on young people will be very heavy.

The fund system is intended to make up for this difficulty. The fund system is to put the money of young people into a fund pool, and use the interest to pay their retirement pensions through the operation of securities, insurance and various financial management. However, the fund system has certain financial risks, because this money cannot be lost. Once it is lost, there will be no money to pay retirement pensions to the elderly. Or if the fund pool is getting smaller and smaller, there is also a risk.

The pension system in the world is moving in the same direction, the three-pillar model. The first pillar is the pension issued by the state; the second pillar is the retirement annuity of the enterprise; the third pillar is the personal retirement financial management. Even if there is a problem with one pillar, you still have the other two pillars. For China, it actually wants to move in this direction.

Community building in Chengdu, the elderly rest in front of the community cafe

Q: What is a flexible retirement system?

A：Flexible retirement system means that some people are willing to retire early and receive a pension, so they can receive a lower pension; some people are willing to retire later, so they can receive a higher pension. An ideal system is to allow everyone to choose the life they want, those who want to continue working can shine, and those who want to return to their families can return to their families, but they all have appropriate protection.

A reported Shenzhen kindergarten. Liang Jie suggested that when the elderly are "too busy to take care of children", public childcare policies need to be improved.

Q: What kind of supporting reform measures are needed to delay retirement?

A：In fact, when we discuss the issue of aging and delayed retirement, we should not regard it as an isolated issue. We should think about what chain reactions a specific policy change will have? What will happen to the health and living conditions of the elderly and their relationships with their children?

For example, if the elderly are unable to take care of their grandchildren, who will cook for them? There needs to be more support for the socialization of childcare. For another example, when unemployment becomes frequent, unemployment benefits are needed to support your life. The unemployment benefit system in various places also needs to be further improved, especially the promotion of unemployment insurance for the elderly.

In the documentary "Front Wave", Grandma Wang Minhua is crazy about online shopping

Q: Why did you say before that “aging is always a new problem”?

A：For example, the social environment in which our parents retire now is completely different from the social environment in which we retire in 20 or 30 years. The challenges we will face after retirement in the future may be how to adapt to AI, how to deal with psychological problems, loneliness and lack of companionship, which may not have been thought of by the previous generation, so each generation must rethink its own retirement issues.

*Data source for flexible employment pension participation rate: Yan Ni, Li Taomei, Zhou Yu, et al., “An Analysis of the Social Insurance System for Platform Economy Practitioners under the New Employment Model”, Macroeconomic Management, 2020