Older white males hurt more by this recession

You're double-counting. Those overall rates include white men over 55.

I suppose this is related to previous unemployment level. So they are worse off relatively to usual.

It's also a question of what unemployment does to you financially or psychologically. At 55, the damage from 6 months off the books could be a lot worse then 25 or 35.

They are more likely to be inflexible in their spending. They are more likely to be frantically saving for retirement. They are also more likely to get demoralised. You can go from "I have 30 years experience. You can't buy that." to "No one wants to hire a middle aged employee" very quickly. They may have more of an emotional attachment to their work identity: a foreman, a manager. A 30 year old fired from a middle management job forced to temp as a receptionist is likely to be demoralised. A 55 year old in that position might be a lot worse off. I wouldn't be surprised if the older one turned down these positions or (more likely) never apply for them to a greater degree then younger people. Taking the opportunity to retrain in a new 'career' is also less likely.

Not only common, but I would think accurate as well.

I think so, at least for the "normal person" that follows a path along the line of school into a series of jobs with medium to large organizations.

Most salaries are based on seniority or else on skills and abilities. Although those are not the same thing by any stretch, they both normally are correlated with age, though of course there are numerous exceptions.

Seniority takes time, and only time, to build up. So while the older people do not necessarily have seniority, the young necessarily do not.

Skill, experience, and knowledge generally improve with age, especially amoung the ambitious that continue taking opportunities to improve those. Even more than that, it takes time to build up a portfolio/resume/references to prove to employers that you have those needed skills and experiences.

So as a general rule income will go up with age. But people start retiring in their sixties, for some people in their early sixties. Also, some others that do not fully retire will transition into a career with less stress and correspondingly less income. So, average income for the population as a whole is likely to start plummetting by that point.

So, for the population as a whole, peak income would come in the mid to late 50s with a rapid drop off afterwards. There are of course many outliers. Most athletes and startup founders for instance will pass their peak long before that, but they make up a small portion of the population as a whole.

Since most companies give offers based on the algorithm "What you were getting before plus some fudge factor" and most raises are calculated as "A few percent times what you were getting before" and happen yearly or close to it, aging increases salary. This continues until one's mid sixties, when most people transition from full time employment to some other arrangement, which causes a salary cut.

I have always privately thought this is gratuitously inefficient and severely unfair to both most twenty-somethings and nearly all highly productive workers, regardless of age.

(My productivity in programming has demonstrably increased 100% in the last two years as I've become much better at web development. In my business, this means I make rather more money than I used to. In my day job, 2.5% raise compounded twice, yippee?)

Um considering two of these three were manufacturing-related jobs I think it is inaccurate to apply that conclusion across the board. The article does not mention 50-year old white males who have BS or higher degrees, let alone professional degrees. Since education and unemployment are inversely related, I doubt things are as dire for educated adults.

Minimum wage at a WalMart is not a survival strategy. If you are lucky enough to get full time (unlikely), one minimum wage job is not going to feed a family and make a mortgage payment. $1300 a month gross, $975 net, $400 after mortgage, $200 after essential utilities, negative balance after pre existing debt service. Nothing for food, medical, essential transportation to and from job, etc. Sorry, the house must go, file bankruptcy, move to a homeless shelter next door to WalMart and walk to work.

In the hard-hit manufacturing areas of Ohio and such, where the local Owens Corning plant has just laid off a lot of people, there are waiting lists for jobs at Walmart. No, Walmart is probably not hiring there.

There is not an endless supply of low wage survival jobs at the bottom of the market. That's why even illegal immigration is slowing.