Older unemployed people turn to employment services more often, but move less often than younger ones | Economy

Each person experiences unemployment differently. However, there are recognizable patterns of behavior depending on different age groups of the unemployed. Thus, although official data indicate that young people under 25 have stopped signing up for government jobs because they understand that they will not find a way out,…

Each person experiences unemployment differently. However, there are recognizable patterns of behavior depending on different age groups of the unemployed. Thus, if official data show that young people under 25 have stopped signing up for government jobs because they understand that they will not find a way out, then veterans, on the contrary, continue to do this. However, the former are more active in their job search than the latter: they post and update their resumes earlier on various digital portals such as LinkedIn or InfoJobs, and participate in more selection processes.

Data from the EPA for the first quarter of the year show, on the one hand, that just over half of unemployed people aged 16 to 24 say they are registered as job seekers (58%); In contrast, nearly nine in ten people aged 45 and over say yes (88%). A difference of more than 30 percentage points, peaking at 40 in mid-2022. EPA microdata, in turn, shows that while 171,000 unemployed people aged 55 and older applied to government agencies, only 48,000 people under the age of 25 did so. This. Additionally, 193,000 young people updated their resumes after losing a job, 40,000 more than most veterans.

Experts say this difference in behavior masks a greater (or less) focus on digital tools, as well as the level of trust these groups place in government employment policies. In fact, portals like InfoJobs, which saw almost four million registrations for some of its published jobs in 2023, focus specifically on attracting a younger audience. According to Monica Perez, director of communications and research at this employment platform, “young people are more actively seeking work and integrating into the labor market.” “The number of applicants in the 18 to 24 age group continues to grow significantly and already accounts for 30% of demand,” he adds.

According to data from the latest Spanish labor market report, a quarter of candidates who registered for the 2023 offer were aged between 18 and 28 (26%), almost double those aged between 45 and 54 (15%). However, the largest age group was made up of people from 25 to 34 years old (33%). “InfoJobs has recorded a progressive increase in the presence of candidates from the youngest age group (18-24 years) over the past two years,” the document states. “The number of applicants in this group has grown by 18% compared to 2021, resulting in their share of demand on the platform rising from 24% to 26%.”

It’s not news (and it’s not statistics) that turning to public employment services is not among the favorite job search options for the unemployed, even among those who decide to register. “These agencies are not working and the example of other countries such as the UK should be followed, where the unemployed are helped to put together a correct CV and a number of obligations are required while they remain enrolled, such as reporting the various interviews he has given,” muses Diego Valero, president of pension consulting company Novaster. “Older workers are valuable because of the knowledge they have acquired throughout their careers, but when they stop working, they may not have the opportunity to use new tools to find a job. This doesn’t mean they can’t learn it. So getting this kind of help would be much more beneficial than other types of courses that have not been proven to work,” he adds.

Synchronizing the development of active employment policies with vacancies demanded by the labor market is another of the main requirements of employers. “There is an urgent need to promote active employment policies, both those implemented in the private sphere, which can provide experience, contacts and knowledge of business reality in addition to sectoral and territorial capillarity, and those developed by public employment services”, Andreu Croignas goes into depth , President of Asempleo, an association of employers of temporary work companies. “Cooperation between both areas should be facilitated as much as possible. It makes no sense that successful, efficient and effective formulas are not being implemented in the most advanced European countries,” he adds.

This clash of trends, in addition to showing the distance between strategies between both groups, also increases the differences in age ranges between the results of the two official statistics that count the total number of unemployed people – SEPE registered unemployment and the Environment Agency INE—. The discrepancy arises because for an agency dependent on the Department of Labor, an unemployed person is only counted if he or she is registered with the agency, but for the statistical office survey, it is enough that he or she was available for work and actively looking for work.

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