Number of older workers trapped in long-term unemployment hits 10-year high

The number of older workers trapped in long-term unemployment has rocketed to a ten-year high – soaring by over 50 per cent in the last year alone. Planned changes to working age benefits could drive this figure even higher, warns Age UK today.

PRIME’s Director of Development, Peter Bennie, said that against this increasingly challenging backdrop for older workers, it is important that those who become unemployed look at what help there is to find other ways of working, including self-employment.

Earlier when interviewing Andy Harrop from AgeUK, BBC Breakfast’s Sian Williams seemed dubious about the opportunities for unemployed over-50s to set up in business.

As we know at PRIME, this can be a viable option for many people – currently 18% of working people aged between 50 and State Pension Age is self-employed^† – and research shows that business survival rates are almost four times better than for younger people.

We, like AgeUK, are also concerned about the disproportionate number of over 50s who are becoming long-term unemployed, and the prospects of re-employment for the huge number of public sector workers who are projected to lose their jobs over the next few years.

Since August 2008, the number of unemployed over 50s has risen by 51%, compared with 36% for the under 50s^††, and the cost of 50+ worklessness now stands at £72 billion per annum.

At this time when Government is putting together the specifications for the new single Work Programme, we cannot afford to miss the opportunity to build in tailored, effective measures to help a significant number of the 3 million workless over-50s back to work, particularly as the changes to Retirement Age will bring even more older people into the workforce who would otherwise be drawing their State Pension.

These measures must include help to make the transition from employment or unemployment to self-employment. The AgeUK article “Number of 50-plus workers trapped in long-term unemployment rockets to 10-year high” can be downloaded from

http://www.ageuk.org.uk/latest-press/50-plus-workers-trapped-in-long-term-unemployment/

^†source: ONS Annual Population Survey, September 2009

^††source: ONS Labour Market Statistical Bulletin, July 2010

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