Those over 55 years of age register for the first time a higher unemployment rate than the rest, according to a study

The people over 55 years oldwhich have historically recorded the lowest levels of unemployment, have for the first time a unemployment rate 0.4 points higher than that of the group of active people between 25 and 54 years old. It is the main conclusion of a study prepared by the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (Ivie) that takes as a reference the average unemployment rate for this group in the first three quarters, which was 9.8% compared to 9.4% for those under 55 years of age.

In 1994, the difference between the unemployment rate of the group of workers up to 54 years of age and that of those over 55 years of age It exceeded nine points. Years later, the gap began to gradually narrow until it disappeared completely in 2023. Aside from the cyclical oscillations that have affected the Spanish labor market as a whole and the recent reduction in unemployment, the relative worsening experienced by the elderly over recent decades has been “very substantial”, according to the document.

This worsening hides large differences between those who have managed to remain active throughout their careers and those who have had to seek employment beyond 55 years of age. At the same time, the job insecurity suffered by older people of this age who have been forced to go on unemployment is higher and their chances of getting reemployed, and the conditions of the jobs they manage to access, are also worse than those of younger people.

In a context of demographic aging, increased spending on pensions and growing demand for human capital, the study indicates that reforms focused on improvement in employment and training of older workers.

He also advocates overcome stereotypes based on age and get the companies themselves to invest more in the training of senior workers, since young candidates will be increasingly scarce, retirements more frequent and the difficulties in filling vacancies more intense. In this sense, a positive element is that employed seniors enjoy, on average, higher quality jobs than the rest of the population, something that would facilitate this objective.

“Spain is experiencing an intense process of demographic aging that also affects its active population and has worrying implications for the sustainability of the pension system and, in general, the welfare state,” the report maintains.

The reflection of this problem in salaries

The difficulties in re-entering the labor market for those over 55 years of age are confirmed by a variable as relevant as salary. Data from the most recent quadrennial Salary Structure Survey, referring to 2022, indicate that the average annual earnings of the elderly is higher than that of the rest of employees (30,038 euros compared to 26,855 in the case of those aged 25 to 54).

However, for seniors with less than one year of seniority in the job the salary is much lower (19,558 euros), somewhat lower than that of employees aged 25 to 54 in a similar situation (19,837 euros) and is also a long way from the average salary of older people who have not had their professional careers interrupted (40,520 euros, with 30 years of seniority).