It barely makes the news now when employers, such as the hotel trade, complain about how poorly native-born Brits compare as workers with bright young East Europeans. But there is one section of the employment market that bucks the trend.

According to the Office for National Statistics, one thing came between Britain and the credit crunch last quarter, and that was the entry of older workers into the labour market. There were 175,000 jobs created in the three months to November, of which more than half, 90,000, were filled by people over 50. The notion that people are still being hired as they head for what was once, laughably, called the retirement age should cheer us up. A workforce that brings together energetic Poles and hardy Brits of the war generation seems rather a good combination given the dearth of skills and any discernible work ethic among many school leavers.

It's also a hopeful trend, given that we're all heading for an extended old age. Average life expectancy for a professional man is 80, an increase of seven years since the 1970s. By comparison with previous generations, we're so many Methuselahs; we may as well work.

With my debts I'll never be able to afford not to, but even for the solvent, the prospect of decades of retirement can only fill rational people with gloom. It was curious, then, to find that some pundits treated evidence of an ageing workforce as bad news - “record numbers of women are being forced to work beyond the age of 60”, according to one Eeyore-ish paper.

But lots of those women are delighted at the prospect. They may not have the qualifications of people in their twenties (only 6 per cent went to university in the Seventies, whereas nearly half do now) but given the variable quality of those qualifications, that may not be such a handicap. Younger workers may have the edge in rapid-reaction work but an older generation's experience and life skills are unquantifiable assets. If you ask me, we should all be taking our lead from the Pope, who, at 80, is only getting into the swing of his job. At the Nationwide Building Society, the retirement age is now 75.

One of the messengers in my office had to retire at 81 because his wife was ill - “I wouldn't go otherwise, Mel”, he told me sorrowfully - and another, in his sixties, says he's staying as long as possible: “This place is like my family.” There are lots more like them, people whose jobs wouldn't feature on a school leaver's wish list, but for whom life without work is short on human interest. And money. As ever, equality legislation is simply keeping pace with reality - age discrimination is not merely illegal; it now looks irrational too.

The author is God correspondent for The Oldie

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