Older workers generally have better jobs and higher wages, and their contribution to social security funds is a key factor in pension sustainability at a time when … They are looking for formulas to delay retirement age due to high expenses. But they also remain preferred objective in company exit plans and when they lose their job and have to look for a new one, they suffer more than others: more time unemployed, more temporary work and low-skilled jobs. They continue to suffer like no one else from the consequences of ageism, a employment discrimination for age reasons.
A study of BBVA Foundation and Valencian Institute of Economic Research (IVIE) explains that the unemployment rates of those over 55 are traditionally lower than those of the rest of the workers and even mark a difference of up to 9.2 percentage points in 1994 compared to those between 25 and 54 years old. But this gap narrowed until it disappeared in 2023, when the gap became unfavorable for the elderly, a change of sign which continues, with an unemployment rate at 9.8%, or 0.4 points more than the cohort of 25 to 54 year olds. “The deterioration experienced by older people in recent decades has been very substantial,” say the authors of the work, for whom “in a context of demographic aging, increased retirement spending and growing demand for human capital, attention to improving employment and training of older people must be a fundamental objective.”
unemployment rate
by age groups
Percentage of active population
Average of
first three trimesters
of the year
Unemployment rate by age group
Percentage of active population
Average of
first three trimesters
of the year
The authors of the work review greater difficulties faced by unemployed people over 55 when looking for work. 58% suffer from long-term unemployment – more than a year looking for work without finding any – compared to 36% among those aged 25 to 54 or 17.8% between 16 and 24 years old. More difficulties in finding work and lower quality of jobs obtained, according to the report, which specifies that this situation is different in the case of elderly people who have maintained their work and their professional career without surprises or interruptions.
More precarious jobs
In the case of those who have just found employment, 52.6% have temporary employment, 10% have a maximum of three months and 4.5% are permanent, discontinuous. Conversely, among the oldest employees with more than 25 years of seniority, the temporary employment rate is only 2% and the percentage of temporary workers fixed discontinuous is reduced by half (2.4%). Older people who start over are also worse off than younger people in similar circumstances. For employees aged 25 to 54 with less than one year of seniority, temporary employment represents 44.2% (including 9.2% precarious employment).
The work of the BBVA Foundation and the IVIE highlights that jobs accessible to older people are therefore less stable, concentrated in lower quality and less qualified professions. Among workers with over 25 years oldhighly skilled jobs represent 45.6% of the total and elementary professions only 7%. In contrast, among older people with new jobs, these percentages vary considerably: only 15.6% are in highly skilled positions, while 29.4% are in elementary occupations. The situation is worse than that of young employees who have just entered the job market. Among those aged 25 to 54, the highest quality jobs represent 29.1% of the total and elementary jobs 20%, while for young people aged 16 to 24 the percentages are 27% and 15.5% respectively.
In addition to these objective characteristics of employment, the work highlights other more subjective indicators, linked to modify the conditions of employmentwhich point in the same direction. 21.5% of newly hired seniors wish to change their schedule, while for seniors with more than 25 years of seniority, this is only 9.7%. Nearly one in six seniors who found a job less than a year ago (16.4%) continue to look for another. This percentage is only 0.8% for seniors who have worked for 25 years.
Obstacle course: salaries
Added to all this obstacle course is the salary factor. Data from the most recent salary structure survey, covering 2022, indicate that the average annual salary of seniors is higher than that of other employees (30,038 euros against 26,855 for people aged 25 to 54). However, for seniors with less than one year of seniority in the position, the salary is much lower (19,558 euros), a little lower than that of employees aged 25 to 54 in a similar situation (19,837 euros) and far from the average salary of seniors who have not seen their professional career interrupted (40,520 euros, with 30 years of seniority).
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