Recent improvements in the labor market have not applied to some older workers. From stubborn trends to pandemic disruptions, senior women, Blacks and Hispanics as groups have not yet regained lost ground.
In July, unemployment fell to a low 3.5% overall from 3.6% in June. The numbers were even better for workers aged 55 years and older, falling from 2.7% to 2.5%, according to a new AARP analysis.
But this boost was not enjoyed by older women and seniors in some racial and ethnic minority groups, reported the organization’s Jennifer Schramm. Unemployment rates remain the highest among Blacks 55 and older, for example, continuing a trend seen before the pandemic. In fact, Black job seekers overall were the only demographic group to experience increased unemployment in July, with a rate at 4.1%. That’s compared with 4% for Hispanic/Latino job seekers, 3.2% for Asian job seekers and 2.7% for white job seekers.
Many disparities in the recent economic recovery are due to the pandemic’s disruptions, such as job losses and its negative effects on working conditions across industries, Schramm reported. Older women, for example, had some of the highest unemployment rates in the early months of the pandemic and still are making up for lost ground.
Service workers took a big job loss hit, for example, with many of those jobs employing high numbers of Black and Hispanic women. But Black women, including those aged 55 and older, also were highly represented as essential workers, with greater COVID-19 exposure and illness risks along with stressful working conditions, Schramm wrote.
Asian older adults, meanwhile, have yet to make up from job losses sustained during March and April 2020, during which this group had the highest rates of unemployment. Those job seekers saw 2.8% unemployment in the second quarter of 2022 compared with 2.4% in the first quarter of 2020.
