Age and redundancy — age discrimination
All age groups are spending longer unemployed. Excluding the extremes of ages, little more than 50% of people find employment within 6 months.
In addition, the downward trend that can be seen in the 2006 graph is back. Our conclusion from the 2009 data no longer appears substantiated. Each five year age group tends to be more likely to spend longer unemployed than the one before. Age is again a predictor of the time taken to find new work following redundancy.
That said, there are a couple of exceptions: those aged 30-34 and those aged 40-44.
Those aged 30-34 tend to spend a bit less time unemployed than the trend would otherwise suggest. Whilst compared to other age groups, those 40-44 years old spend longer unemployed. Less than 20% of this age group find work within 3 months – the lowest of all age groups.
Another thing to note is that the older age groups were more likely to be out of work for longer following redundancy in 2012 than they were in either 2006 or 2009.
The data for the 2009, 2012 and 2015 analysis was obtained using a bespoke request to the ONS using variables AGE, DURUN2, REDYL11 and PWTA11.