AAP

Every month, a week after the official labour force figures are released, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publishes figures showing the disproportionate burden of unemployment borne by older people.And every month, a regular as clockwork, the figures are ignored – by economists, by politicians and by the media.It’s understandable.

The distribution of joblessness among age groups is not going to affect share prices or interest rates.A bank economist taking a call from a journalist wanting to talk about mature-age unemployment would more likely assume it’s a colleague playing a prank that a genuine query.And it takes real effort to learn to use the obscure and user-hostile software needed to prise the numbers from the ABS.

Politicians are smart enough to realise that by the time voters reach middle age they are unlikely to be swayed by soon-forgotten election-time promises to make things easier for grey-haired job-hunters.And journalists are interested in news.And there’s nothing new about this sad little corner of the labour market.It goes from bad to worse and back again with the ebb and flow of the business cycle, but it never strays outside those limits.At the moment, it’s just plain bad.

In January, there were 655,200 people fitting the narrow definition of unemployed.They had spent an average of just over 34 weeks since either holding down a job or entering the labour market and joining the hunt for work.For those in the youth category, 15 to 19 years old, the unemployment rate was 17.5 per cent, although half were full-time secondary or tertiary students.And they had been unemployed for an average of 16 weeks.At the other end of the age scale, the average time on the society’s reserve bench for those aged at least 55 years was four and half times longer, at 71 weeks.

The jobless rate in that age group was lower, at three per cent.But, despite a lower total number unemployed, 59,800 over-55s versus 150,700 youth, these older-aged unemployed have racked up nearly twice as much total time out of work than their teenaged counterparts.At last count, currently unemployed over-55s had racked up 4.2 million weeks of continual joblessness between them – 18 per cent of the total time spent jobless despite being only nine per cent of the total number without work.

But this is nothing new.ABS figures show the average duration of unemployment for over-55s in the 1980s was 80 weeks, compared with 38 weeks for under-55s and 25 weeks for teenagers.

No, it’s nothing new.

Source:Business Spectator

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