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Comment by jayess | Hacker News Reader

The unemployment rate of those 55+ is 3.2% while the rate for those 20-24 is 9.4%. God help you if you're a teen, where the unemployment rate is 16.1%.

http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm

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While I suppose if you were forced to take any job, then those figures would hold. As for myself, I've found it next to impossible to get even an interview as a hardware engineer. Yes, I suppose I stayed a little too long at one company (26 years) and the company was failing towards the end of my tenure.

The point is, I posted this here because the problem is even more acute with technical employment.

How public is your age? I found myself having a very difficult time getting interviews being an 18 year old (I was applying for above my age's average skill level). I stopped mentioning my age as well as removed my birth year from my online profiles. After that, interviews started coming in.

Age isn't mentioned in my CV. Probably dates in the CV give age away.

Oh yeah, didn't think about that aspect. Best of luck to you hwstar.

It's probably not simple enough to just look at unemployment-- we should look at workforce participation. The economist had a good chart on the breakdown of: working, unemployed, long-term unemployed, disabled, and retired: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/10/21/what-we-know-about... (It confirms what you said--- young people have the hardest problems with unemployment.)

I also found this graph: http://www.economist.com/node/21610975 People over 54 are doing great! It's the 24-54 cohort that is getting kicked to the curb.

I can't find it where they have those breakdowns by U category (showing scope of who is included), or even which U-category they used.

The U-6 rate (which counts "discouraged workers") is almost five times the U-1 rate (12/2015).

I found it very frustrating that I was legally barred from many jobs while I was under 18. When I worked in baseball concessions, I couldn't be a cashier because they touched cans of beer as they passed them to customers. Fortunately, I could work as a cook, though I wasn't very good at it. Various laws significantly reduced the opportunities I had available to me, often for no good reason.

What is time from unemployed to employed for 55+?

I think the median time span is... death.

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