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LATEST NEWS
| Skills and Talents of Older Workers Going to Waste Says TUC | | | Source: TAEN website 16.03.10
The numbers of workers aged 50 and over who have been unemployed for more than six months has been steadily rising since the recession began and the TUC is concerned that the older workers who have lost their jobs during the downturn are not finding new ones, nor are they getting back into the labour market. Instead, their skills and talents are going to waste on the dole queue.
The TUC’s new The Costs of Unemployment report details the price of long-term unemployment paid by individuals, communities and the UK.
The report examines the wide range of implications of long-term unemployment, including the financial and social costs and the consequences for physical and mental health and family life. Among other findings it highlights:
• Long-term unemployment is a major risk factor for poverty. Working age people in workless households are more than twice as likely to be poor as those in households where some of the adults are in work, and they are more than three times as likely to be poor as those in households where all the adults are in work.
• Primary school children whose fathers are unemployed, economically inactive or absent miss more time from school than other children.
• A DSS study of 30 unemployed families published during the 1980s recession reported how unemployment left the men feeling irritable, strained or depressed by the loss of their role as breadwinner, while their wives were burdened by the stresses of impossible budgeting.
• People who become unemployed are more likely to experience situations which are very stressful and which may make mental ill-health more likely, such as debt or problems with relationships.
Commenting on the report, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Every job loss is a human tragedy, but when people are out of work for over a year they risk being permanently scarred by joblessness.
“Long spells out of work can increase the likelihood of mental health problems and relationship breakdown, and devastate entire communities. People who have been unemployed for a long time have a much lower chance of finding work again. There is a real danger that the UK’s older working population is being left on the scrap heap.
“Government investment has kept unemployment well below the levels reached in previous recessions, but there can be no room for complacency. The Government should extend its job guarantee for young people to anyone out of work for 18 months to stop people getting mired in semi-permanent joblessness.”
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