Bus drivers lead as oldest workers

New Zealand's bus companies are being urged to become more "family-friendly" employers after new figures showing that bus drivers are the country's oldest occupational group.

A report by the Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Trust shows that 63 per cent of people who listed their occupation as "bus driver" in the 2006 census were aged 50 or over - twice as many as 15 years earlier.

Teachers, nurses, social workers and fitters and turners have also aged much faster than the national average.

In some professions, such as law and medicine, ageing men have been offset by growing numbers of younger women, but the report warns of an impending "double blow" as many of the young women may soon leave to have children at the same time as the older men retire.

The report's author, Dr Mervyl McPherson, said the figures highlighted sectors where employers would need to adjust to keep skilled workers.

"We don't know why so many bus drivers are over 50," she said.

"Perhaps it is a job that a lot of older men who have very few skills and have been made redundant, or who have reached an age when they can't do harder manual occupations, perhaps bus driving is an occupation they can move into.

"The other thing to look at is why younger people don't want to do the job. For long-distance driving perhaps you have to travel away from home. In the urban setting you have split shifts, and women tend to drop out of bus driving. So you have to wonder how compatible it is with the lifestyle of people in the family age group."

The report shows that, although women have increased in almost every occupation, they have declined in bus driving from 27 per cent in 1986 to 20 per cent in 2006.

Industry profiles prepared by the Tranzqual industry training organisation show that 68 per cent of long-distance bus drivers and 79 per cent of urban bus drivers are male, with a median age in both sectors of 51.

Bus and Coach Association chief executive Raewyn Bleakley confirmed that many bus drivers joined the industry after a career somewhere else.

"It's not a popular occupation for young people, and there is a preference for older drivers because of their maturity," she said.

She said the industry's labour shortage had eased in the recession, but urban bus patronage was still growing.

Post-Primary Teachers Association president Kate Gainsford said the doubling in the proportion of secondary teachers aged 50 and over, from 19 per cent in 1991 to 37 per cent in 2006, was partly because of young teachers going overseas to pay off student loans.

However, she said there was still a teacher shortage.

In law, the report finds that women outnumber men in all age groups up to 35, with a peak in their late twenties, while the numbers of male lawyers peak in their late fifties.

Women who made up 54 per cent of lawyers in their early 20s in 1991 had dropped to 46 per cent of the same cohort of lawyers, now in their late thirties by 2006, apparently because many left to have babies.

Some of the most dramatic gains for women over the 15 years to 2006 were in jobs for as "managers". Women's share of research and development manager jobs more than doubled from 21 per cent to 44 per cent, and among sales and marketing managers rose from 22 per cent to 39 per cent.

The increase was less dramatic for general managers where women rose from 18 per cent to 28 per cent.

www.eeotrust.org.nz/research