Older Unemployed Workers Half as Likely to Get Hired

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Older workers are less likely to get laid off, but they’re having a much harder time finding new work than younger job-seekers.

New research by the Urban Institute shows that seniority helps protect older workers from job loss--the average jobless rate for workers over age 55 in 2010 was 7.7% for men, and 6.2% for women. That’s considerably lower than the national unemployment rate, which stood at 9.4% in December. Overall, workers age 50 to 61 were 34% less likely to lose their jobs during the downturn than younger workers, the Urban Institute researchers found.

But workers in that age group who have lost their jobs in the recession are one-third less likely to find new work than their counterparts age 25 to 34. And workers over age 62 were half as likely to be re-employed:

What’s more, workers who do find new jobs are accepting lower pay. Media hourly wages for displaced men age 50 to 61 who became re-employed from 1996 to 2007 fell 20% below the median figures for their former jobs; by contrast, wages fell just 4% for men age 25 to 34.

The findings point to the difficulty of keeping workers on the job longer--an aim of policymakers hoping to reduce pressure on federal spending for entitlement programs such as Social Security.

“We need to get people to work longer so they can help produce the goods and services necessary to promote economic growth and help pay taxes to fund public services,” says Richard Johnson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a co-author of the report. “But that can’t happen unless seniors can find work. We need to devote more money to training and employment services for older workers. The federal government has only one small employment program targeted to older people--we need more. We should also consider extending unemployment benefits for older people, since it takes them so long to find work when unemployed.”

Age discrimination claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have spiked in recent years. One researcher hoping to quantify discrimination in hiring several years ago sent out 4,000 resumes for fictitious female applicants to companies that had run newspaper ads for open jobs in Boston, Mass., and St. Petersburg, Florida, with ages ranging from 35 to 62. She indicated the fictitious applicants’ ages by listing the date of high school graduation. She found that a younger worker was more than 40% more likely to be called back for an interview than an older worker, when “older” was defined as age 50 or higher.

“Employers are clearly reluctant to hire older workers,” says Johnson. “Many are concerned that older workers are more expensive than younger ones, that they lack up-to-date skills, that they won’t be around long enough to justify the cost of hiring and training them. These concerns are mostly unfounded, but they’re widespread. If that’s not outright age discrimination, it certainly comes close.”

Dr. David DeLong, an expert in organizational behavior, acknowledges that age discrimination is an issue, but urges job seekers to focus on aspects of the hunt that they can control. Among his key recommendations:

Keep skills current. For example, older job candidates may think they’re up on the latest, but may not be familiar with the latest social media or mobile computing technology.

Expand horizons. The odds of landing a new job just like the old one are very slim, due to ongoing downsizing of large corporations and economic restructuring spurred by globalization. Older workers need to consider training for new occupations and consider self-employment or entrepreneurial options.

Don’t over-play deep experience. Years of experience don’t always win the day and may be a turn-off with younger hiring managers who may perceive you as an arrogant know-it-all. Rather than talk about how you’ve done it elsewhere, explain how you’d help solve a prospective employer’s problems and mention how you’ve applied solutions to similar challenges elsewhere.

DeLong recently talked about the challenges older workers face with Over50andOutofWork, a website that has been collecting video interviews with labor force experts and jobless older workers. Here’s the interview:

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