Over-fifties who found new work went back on 9.5 per cent less

Over twenty years of data, people over fifty who lost a job and found another returned on hourly pay 9.5 per cent below what they had been earning. They also took longer to get back. Fewer than two in three were in work again within six months, against around three in four of those under fifty.

The figures are from A U-shaped crisis: the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on older workers, published by the Resolution Foundation on 26 April 2021. The report describes its window as the past twenty years and its measure as hourly earnings. A separate commentary by the same author put the fall at 17 per cent once reduced hours are counted; that figure is not in the report and is not carried here.