Retiring at Age 70?

 I sat last night and watched a public TV news piece (ZDF, late news) and the topic was 'retirement discussion over age 70'.  Yes, there are several groups now pressing forward to bring the retirement age in Germany to age 70.  

Presently? The retirement age is set to age 65 and 11 months (just short of age 66).  It's on a progress scale.....where by the year 2030....it will be 67 years old.

There is an exception written into the rules....if you were employed early on, and contributed 45 years of pension....you can retire by age 63.  They are always careful about saying how many people fit into this scheme.  If you passed your certifications early on (say by age 18), and got a full-time job....then you'd fall into this benefit.

If you gathered a hundred middle-class Germans in a pub and asked their feeling of working until age 70?  I suspect fewer than ten would be appreciative of the idea.  Most would prefer to be fully retired by age 63.  

Why this age 70 chatter continues?  Well....it goes to three key factors:

1.  The birth-rate is killing the future employment numbers.

2.  A ton of empty jobs exist presently after all the Covid business.

3.  There is a lessening number of people who apply for the craft skills....opting for college/university instead.  This is a recognized problem over the past five years (it wasn't this way in the 1980s/1990s). 

Will Germans gather around this idea?  The only way I can see this.....is by bumping up the social retirement monthly paycheck.  As of early 2020, the average pension for a guy (in western Germany) was 1,169 Euro....for a woman, it was 700 Euro.  

If you said for each 'extra' year, it was a 75 Euro add-on per each month, for the pension....I suspect it'd interest a fair number of folks, but you'd be talking about 375 Euro that you'd have to 'invent' out of thin air.  

Enticing them more?  Well....why not cut all income tax for a German over the age of 63....making them tax free as long as they didn't make over 50,000 Euro a year in salary.  You could even offer up ten additional days each year for vacation, as further enticement. 

So when you see this topic come up.....at least you can understand both sides of the issue, and why the older Germans get all whiny about the topic.