50-plus less likely to lose their job during the recession

Thanks to Rick Hartley for telling me about this factlet. A few days back I wrote about the: “Resilience of employment amongst the 50-plus.”

In the UK it appears that the young are having a worse time of things, as far as remaining employed during the recession, than the 50-plus. Getting employed again, having lost a job, might be a very different issue.

The US appears to be following the same course as is demonstrated by this fact

The only segment of the population that is gaining jobs is the 55+ age category. This group gained 224,000 net new jobs in May while the rest of the population lost 661,000. In fact, over the last year, those folks 55 and up garnered 630,000 jobs whereas the other age categories collectively lost over six million positions.

"Moreover, the number of 55 year olds and up who have two jobs or more has risen 1.1% in the last year, the only age cohort to have managed to gain any multiple jobs at all.

I have no idea why this is happening but it is a very important issue for marketers who are trying to understand the result of the recession on their customer base.

It would seem that we can add to the usual list of reasons why the 50-plus are an important group the fact that they are more likely to remain employed. Dick Stroud