More than a quarter of Irish people who were in receipt of the old-age pension for the first time last year stayed on working.
A new report by the European Commission has revealed that 26.3 per cent of all Irish citizens who became eligible for the old-age pension in 2023 continued to work.
The research showed that Irish people are more likely to postpone retirement from working, despite receiving the old-age pension, than most Europeans.
On average, just 13 per cent of EU citizens aged 50-74 who received the old-age pension for the first time last year stayed on working..
Ireland’s rate of 26.3 per cent was the seventh highest among the 27 EU member states and twice the EU average.
However, Irish males were more likely to stay working despite being in receipt of the pension with 32.6 per cent compared to Irish females where the rate was 20.1 per cent.
The highest share of people who continued working after receiving the old-age pension were in the Baltic states headed by Estonia (54.9 per cent) followed by Latvia (44.2 per cent) and Lithuania (43.7 per cent).
High rates were also found in some Nordic countries including Norway, Sweden and Iceland.
The lowest rates were found in Romania (1.7 per cent) Greece (4.2 per cent) and Spain (4.9 per cent).
A breakdown of the figures shows 16.9 per cent of Irish citizens who qualified for the old-age pension last year continued working without any changes to their normal work, while 9.4 per cent remained working but with some changes to their work pattern.
Almost half (48.4 per cent) of such Irish people were already not working, while 25.3 per cent stopped working once they received the pension.
More than half of all Irish people (50.9 per cent) who stayed working after becoming eligible for the pension last year said they continued at work because they were either being productive or enjoyed work – considerably higher than the EU average of 36.3 per cent.
Another 15.7 per cent said they remained working in order to stay socially integrated.
However, more than one in five reported continuing to work for financial reasons, although the Irish rate at 22.5 per cent was below the EU average of 28.6 per cent.
Irish women were more likely to state they continued to work for financial reasons than Irish males.
Overall, a majority of people in the EU did not work or stopped working in the first six months after they were in receipt of an old-age pension for the first time in 2023.
Among those who continued to work, about half continued as before, while the other half experienced some change to their working pattern such as changing jobs, working fewer hours or working in a second job while stopping the first job.