疾病使英国人无法重返工作岗位(上)

Illness is stopping Britons from coming back to work.

疾病使英国人无法重返工作岗位。

During the 2010s the British economy grew not by becoming much more productive but by keeping people in work for longer.

在2010年代，英国实现经济的增长的方式并不是提高生产率，而是延长人们的工作时间。

Of the 4m or so extra workers who became employed in 2010-20, two-thirds had lived for more than half a century.

在2010-2020年新增的400万左右工人中，三分之二的人年龄已经超过50岁。

Since the pandemic many of these veterans have gone absent without leave.

自疫情爆发以来，这些“老兵”中的许多人擅离职守。

New labour-market data, covering the three months to the end of November 2022, show that there were roughly 300,000 more inactive workers over the age of 50 compared with the first quarter of 2020.

截至2022年11月底的三个月的劳动力市场新数据显示，与2020年第一季度相比，50岁以上的非活跃工人大约增加了30万人。

Number-crunchers divide those out of work into two groups—the unemployed, who are looking and available for work; and the inactive, who are not.

统计者把失业人群分为两部分——失业者，正在寻找并可以找到工作的人；以及非活跃工人，即不再寻找工作的人。

There are far more inactive workers (about 22% of the working-age population) than unemployed ones (under 4%).

非活跃工人的数量（约占劳动年龄人口的22%）远远多于失业工人(不到4%)。

Inactive workers include the long-term sick, the retired, those looking after children, students and those who have given up looking for work.

非活跃工人包括长期患病、已经退休、需要照顾孩子的人，以及学生和那些放弃找工作的人。

The ranks of the sick have apparently swollen the most since the pandemic.

自疫情以来，患病人数明显增加了最多。

There were an additional 300,000 workers between the ages of 16 and 64 who said they were inactive because of long-term illness in the third quarter of 2022 compared with the first quarter of 2020.

与2020年第一季度相比，2022年第三季度，年龄在16岁到64岁之间的员工中，有30万人表示他们因长期患病而处于非活跃状态。

(The other big increase was among students, typically at the younger end of the age spectrum.)

（非活跃数量大幅增长的另一个群体是学生，通常是年龄较小的学生。）

But research by Bee Boileau of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, shows that the increase in ill-health is among workers who have been inactive for over five years rather than among those who recently left the labour force.

但“财政经济学研究所”智库的比·布瓦洛研究表明，健康问题的增加发生在超过五年非活跃的工人群体中，而不是近期离开劳动力大军的工人中。

She points to another, unrelated trend: more workers have been retiring early.

她指出了另一个无关的趋势：越来越多的工人提前退休。

Pension rules, introduced in 2015 and known as "pension freedoms", allow those over the age of 55 to withdraw their nest egg early and gradually draw down the balance to live on.

2015年，被称为“养老金自由”的养老金规则出台，该规则允许55岁以上的人提早提取储蓄金，并逐渐提取余额以维持生活。

The pandemic boosted the value of these pots.

疫情提振了这些存钱罐的价值。

First, would-be retirees had more cash to save through not going into the office or socialising; second, lower interest rates and a stockmarket boom lifted the value of financial assets.

首先，准退休人员居家办公或不参于社交活动能够省下更多的钱；其次，较低的利率和股市的繁荣提升了金融资产的价值。

Some will have used the windfall to retire.

一些人会用这笔意外之财退休。