Courtesy of Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett (two economists that are not exactly on the same side of the ideological spectrum) in the New York Times last month:
While older workers are less likely to be laid off than younger workers, they are about half as likely to be rehired. One result is that older workers have seen the largest proportionate increase in unemployment in this downturn. The number of unemployed people between ages 50 and 65 has more than doubled.
The prospects for the re-employment of older workers deteriorate sharply the longer they are unemployed. A worker between ages 50 and 61 who has been unemployed for 17 months has only about a 9 percent chance of finding a new job in the next three months. A worker who is 62 or older and in the same situation has only about a 6 percent chance. As unemployment increases in duration, these slim chances drop steadily.
The result is nothing short of a national emergency. Millions of workers have been disconnected from the work force, and possibly even from society. If they are not reconnected, the costs to them and to society will be grim.
Unemployment is almost always a traumatic event, especially for older workers. A paper by the economists Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter estimates a 50 to 100 percent increase in death rates for older male workers in the years immediately following a job loss, if they previously had been consistently employed. This higher mortality rate implies that a male worker displaced in midcareer can expect to live about one and a half years less than a worker who keeps his job.
There are various reasons for this rise in mortality. One is suicide. A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the suicide rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States. The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide.It seems to me that this would be something that the ACS' Senior Chemists Committee would be interested in talking about.
Best wishes to the long-term unemployed, and all of us.
Wow, CJ. Draw me in with a title promising cheer and I get increased rate of suicide.
ReplyDeleteI knew older workers have a harder time finding employment but I had no idea it was that bad. It does sound like something the Senior Chemists Committee should address.
ReplyDeleteI suspect most people's retirement funds haven't come back, either, so older people who get laid off and not rehired probably can't retire yet (and may never be able to retire, if they have to use their retirement to survive now).
ReplyDeleteMaybe they'll be able to laugh when companies try to do the things they should have learned how (not) to do thirty years ago but forgot when they outsourced their competency away and laid off their workers, and fail miserably. On the other hand, when they find out who got paid for crippling their company and stripping the remains, maybe not.
Congratulations, Mom and Dad! It's Logan's Run time!
Few colleagues of mine over 50 who were let go the last few years have found comparable jobs in terms of salary or rank. Many cobble together teaching gigs and part-time work. A few have been lucky, but they are the minority.
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