Moreover, PES staff seem to be reluctant, or unable, to sanction workers with long benefit entitlements at the time of mandatory retirement for failure to take up job opportunities. It may not be reasonable to expect them to do this when, as discussed below, benefit levels are high relative to re-employment wages. This applies to situations when the date of separation is predictable from the terms of a fixed-term contract or from the firm’s habitual mandatory retirement age. This plausibly contributed to the stabilisation of the LFS unemployment rate. In the future, other approaches that tackle repeat unemployment without lowering benefit coverage could be considered.