The recession forced a lot of people out of their jobs. Because of a sluggish economy, many companies had to cut their workforce. It looks like recent job loss figures are a little more hopeful, and the unemployment rate has dropped from the highs we saw several months ago. Yet many laid off workers have still been out of work for over a year. In fact, the overall percentage of unemployed people, who have not found a new job in 12 months, has risen sharply.
One group of people that seems to be having a really hard time are older workers. Unemployed folks, over age 55, seem to be having the hardest time finding new jobs after a layoff. In this case, age seems to matter more than profession or education level. Why are older folks having such a tough time finding a new job? After all, many middle age workers and professionals have been at the job for many years. They should bring a lot of experience and knowledge to an interview table.
Why is it so hard for middle aged people to get back to work? There is probably more than one reason for this problem. It could be that young adults are more flexible and mobile.They might simply have more current job skills. Younger workers could even be a little less picky. Since older folks may have been working for a long time, they may expect a higher salary, or better benefits, than the market supports right now.
Hiring managers could even be reluctant to hire older people. Some hiring managers may believe that younger employees will be easier to train and manage. They could also bring more updated job skills. Lots of older job seekers claim that this is true. This has even be in the news. It is called the "Gray Wall".
People who have been out of work for over a year are considered the long term unemployed. If you take all of the people over fifty-five, who are unemployed, over forty percent have been out of work for longer than a year. A large percentage of these laid of workers are having a very hard time sliding into new jobs.
There are several serious problems for people who have been out of work a long time. They may lose their edge when it comes to having current job skills. Technology changes so quickly these days that a year can be a very long time. Many studies have demonstrated that a long term unemployment situation can lead to depress. It can certain impact a person's mood. It may even reduce skill levels. Finally, this situation has got to be tough on people's retirement savings. They may be depleting their retirement funds in order to live, and they probably are not adding new funds if they have no income.
Unemployed people have gotten a lot of attention. In my opinion, we should pay particular attention to people who have been out of work for a year or more, and we should also pay attention to older people who are unemployed. Since many older people have had the same job for decades, they probably also need to work on their current job searching abilities..
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