Authors: By Joelle Saad-Lessler and Teresa Ghilarducci

Date: February, 2012

 

While the harm caused by unemployment is unique to each person, this study focuses on the staggering variety of challenges and perils shared by older people.The U.S. labor force is aging, and so are the people who are unemployed. In March 2011, the U.S. population comprised 305 million people, of whom 36.6 million were age 55-64; over a third (37.5%) of that population were not working -- 4.1% were officially unemployed, and 2% of those out of the labor force were discouraged workers. If we include discouraged workers among the unemployed, 4.8% of older Americans were willing to work but did not have a job in 2011. And these rates are up from the date the recession officially ended in March of 2009. At that time, the official unemployment rate for older workers was 3.04%, the discouraged rate was 1.71%, and the fraction of older Americans who were willing to work but unable to find a job was 3.57%.