Researcher retirements set to rise in France, report warns

Pension reforms will not offset demographic effects, according to government report

The number of researchers retiring from French universities and research institutes is set to rise sharply over the remainder of the decade, according to a report from the research ministry’s statistics office Sies.

Sies’s predictions, published on 6 February, take into account the effect of president Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reforms. These pushed the age at which most people can retire with a full state pension back from 62 to 64 but also meant that many researchers who have had periods of postdoctoral or other work overseas must work to 67 or beyond to retire without penalty.