Baby Boomers: A ‘Gray Wave,’ Now Permanently #Job less rate for over 55 triple that of people under 20 years of age.

Yet the long-term jobless rate for people over 55 was well over triple that of people under 20 years of age. Among the older group, 44 percent had been jobless for more than a year, compared to 12 percent for the youngest segment.

Things are tough all over, for sure. “The percentage of jobless workers who had been unemployed for a year or more in the first quarter of 2012 was more than twice the rate it was at the beginning of the Great Recession (the first quarter of 2008) for all age groups,” Pew reported.

Since 2011, those numbers had begun to improve for many workers, but “for older workers, the long-term unemployment situation continued to worsen during the last year,” Pew researchers said.

Officially, unemployment now stands at 8.1 percent. The government’s definition of long-term unemployed, those out of a job for 27 weeks or more, is at 5.1 million, compared to 12.5 million total unemployed.

The broader U-6 measure, which attempts to capture everyone who has temporarily stopped looking or is working less hours than they would like, stands at 14.5 percent.

Part of the reason the headline rate is falling, despite meager job growth, is because the “labor participation rate,” the numbers of workers considered active, is falling as seniors clock out for good. The participation rate has declined steadily over the decade, from 66.7 percent in April 2002 to 63.6 percent now.

Please read on at:
http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Baby-Boomers-Jobless-employment/2012/05/04/id/438078#ixzz1u3vUJh2o