Our model has Britain at 6 in 100 without work in 2030 and 5.6 in 2035. Poland falls to 3.

Satoria's forecast

Satoria forecast for United Kingdom: share of people without work who want work 5.6% in 2035, up from 4.9% in 2026 - could go either way. 80% range 1.6% to 10.1%.

Britain is the country where our model says work gets harder, and it stays harder to 2035.

Pick a country. Years to 2026 are measured, then our forecast takes over with its 80% range. Britain goes from 4.9 people in 100 without work to about 6 in 2030 and 5.6 in 2035. Poland is the only fall, to 3. This is a moderate model with wide ranges, so read the order: France highest, Poland lowest.

At 55 you are holding three jobs at once.

Your own work, your savings, and a parent who needs more help each year. Our forecasts point in different directions on each. Tap the one that keeps you awake.

Today Britain is at 4.9 in 100, and Poland at 3.4.

Out of every 100 British people who want work, 4.9 do not have it today. Our forecast makes that about 6 by 2030 and 5.6 by 2035. Poland goes the other way, down to about 3.

Out of 100 British people who want work in 2035, how many will not have it?

Card 1 has the answer. Move the slider to where you would have put it first. Today the number is 4.9.

In Poland women aged 55 to 64 earn more than men. That is not good news.

Germany's gap at this age is 24.7%. Poland's is -7.7%, with women ahead. The reason is the pension age: 60 for women, 65 for men. By 55 to 64 only half of Polish women are still in work, and the ones who stay are in better paid jobs.

Poland grows older than France in the early 2030s.

People aged 65 and over were 20.8% of Poland in 2025 and 22.5% of France. Our central path (the middle line of the forecast) has the two level around 2032 and Poland clearly ahead from 2033, reaching 26.7% by 2035. France is the country everyone calls old. This is the strongest model we have, and the ranges still overlap.

The British jobs figure for 2027 is the test.

Our path needs about 5.6%, up from 4.9%. If it lands near 4.9% instead, stop believing the rest of this.

Work after fifty, by country

Start with the country, not the age. In 2026, out of every 100 people who want work, 8.3 do not have it in France and 6.4 in Canada. Britain is at 4.9, the United States at 4.1, Germany at 4.0 and Poland at 3.4.

Our forecast for 2030 moves them unevenly. France 8.9%, Canada 6.7%, Britain 6.0%, the United States 4.7%, Germany 4.3%, Poland 3.2%. Britain rises about 1.1 points, the most of the six. Poland is the only fall. For a country described as easy to hire in and easy to leave, that is the wrong way round.

Be careful with how much weight you put on it. This is a moderate model: about 12% less error than assuming nothing changes, across 28 country series. The ranges are wide, and Britain's band runs from 3.1% to 9.3% in 2030 and from 1.6% to 10.1% in 2035. The order of the countries is the finding. The decimal is not.

A national figure also hides the thing a 55-year-old actually asks. We do not forecast the jobless rate for over-fifties on its own, or by sex, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can show is a measurement. In 2025 the share of people aged 55 to 64 in work, men then women, was 81.9% and 69.8% in the Netherlands, 78.9% and 71.7% in Germany, 71.2% and 49.9% in Poland, and 71.8% and 51.0% in Italy.

The widest pay gap of any age, and why Poland looks upside down

Eurostat measures the gap between women's and men's average hourly pay by age. At 55 to 64 in 2024 it was 24.7% in Germany and 21.5% in France. Then the Netherlands 18.0%, Spain 12.0%, Italy 8.9%. This is the widest the gap gets in any age group.

Poland reads -7.7%. Women of that age earned more an hour than men. Read quickly, that looks like a win. It is not.

Poland's pension age is 60 for women and 65 for men. So by the time you measure ages 55 to 64, about half of Polish women have already left work, against 71% of men. The women who stay are more often in the better paid jobs. A pay gap measured over a smaller and better paid group can turn negative without a single person's pay changing. The number is real. What it describes is who is missing.

Money that sits still

Our monthly forecast reaches August 2027 for prices in four countries. Britain 3.6%, the United States 3.2%, Germany 2.9%. Britain is the only one of them speeding up, from 3.3%.

Hold Britain's 3.6% steady for ten years and money earning nothing buys about 30% less at the end than at the start. At the German rate, about 25% less. That is arithmetic on our own forecast rate, not a second forecast, and we label it that way.

What we cannot tell you is what savings will pay you instead. Our central bank rate model does not beat assuming nothing changes, so we publish no rate forecast at all. The price side we can forecast. The return side we cannot.

The parent in the next room

People aged 65 and over were 20.8% of Poland in 2025 and 22.5% of France. Our forecast takes Poland to 24.0% by 2030 and 26.7% by 2035, a rise of about 5.9 points. Britain rises 2.0 points, from 19.7% to 21.7%.

That means a swap. On our central path Poland is behind France in 2031, at 24.7% against 24.8%, and ahead in 2032, at 25.3% against 25.2%. France is the country people picture when they think of an ageing society. Poland is not. Within six years that changes.

This is the strongest model in the story: about 82% less error than assuming nothing changes, across 51 country series. Even so, the 2035 ranges for Poland and France overlap. The crossing is the most likely path, not a certainty.

Two measurements make this personal. Care for an older parent is unpaid work. It lands most often on a woman in her fifties. Poland has the fewest women that age in paid work. And the parent is more often alone if she is a woman. In 2024, 46.8% of French women aged 65 and over lived alone, against 25.1% of French men. In Poland it was 26.8% against 13.6%.