It does show that older women are at higher risk of long-term unemployment, but only compared to other women. It never compares older women to similarly aged men. The best it does is quote people saying that older women have it harder, but never with actual numbers.
We are therefore unable to estimate how big the problem is. Are older women 1% more at risk than older men? 300%? No idea.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
Men have the exact same long-term unemployment share (50%) in the 50-64 range. So, it's an equally large problem for older men. I 'm baffled by the chauvinism of the author.
It does look that the article has hugely overstated the issue. But there are still two interesting findings, that the article doesn't quite say properly because it hides the numbers, which is a shame:
* Older women's long-term unemployment is now on par with older men. The interesting thing is that earlier, it was much lower. Now, it has reached parity, and fairly quickly. So in terms of the change, there has been a significant change, but in terms of where things stand, this isn't a gender issue.
* The main issue is one of age - older people are at much higher risk of long-term unemployment. Looking at the long-term unemployed, we can see that they are becoming mostly older people. And because in the group of older people, women significantly outnumber men (because women live longer), the group of older women becomes significant.
In other words, older women are a very big proportion of the long-term unemployed not necessarily because of gender issues (which the article focuses on, like taking time off to care for children 20 years earlier - which seems like a stretch anyhow), but rather because older people are most of the long-term unemployed, and there are just a lot more older women than older men.
The woman in the article said she was told 'they want someone younger'. Anyone who can prove they did not get a job cause of their age may want to check with the EEOC and potentially a lawyer.
If you were to mention Fox News I would get the referene since Fox News is mostly a racist, sexist, xenophobe pile of dung. I'm of course exagerating for dramatic effect. They are still quite bad on the things they say(twist) though.
But my experience has been that NYT frequently fails to report meaningful data. For example a few days ago, they compared the propensity of people to marry others of similar income to "eugenics". http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-pow... But then totally and completely failed to show that income level transfers generations, which is crucial for eugenics. They also failed to look at it even mention confounding variables.
Unemployment, men 50-54: 4.3%
Unemployment, women 50-54: 4.4%
Unemployment, men 55-64: 4.5%
Unemployment, women 55-64: 4.2%
I am speculating here, but maybe, if a woman's spouse happens to be working, the woman will not be counted. Or who could be counted as having an early pension? Who is registered to receive benefits from the state under which conditions? Does voluntary work make one disappear from these lists?
There are other unemployment numbers that include people who would work if offered a job but aren't actually looking for one, but that's not the main measure that BLS uses. People that wouldn't take a job even if you offered one to them (like students and early retirees) don't count at all- they don't even show up in the denominator of any of these measures. BLS has the summary of all 6 measures of unemployment at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm but I don't think they have the detailed breakdown of any of the other measures.
You have to be in the workforce to be reflected in them. Voluntary work doesn't count -- and in many cases women are caregivers for grandchildren, spouses, older parents, etc.
I did a skim of the article yesterday. I think you are looking for an apples to apples comparison that doesn't exist. From what I saw, I felt it was trying to explain the apples to oranges comparison that does exist. For example, it notes that women are more likely to simply give up than men. Unemployment statistics stop counting you if you outright give up, thus it is not really useful to look at "unemployment" stats for both genders to understand the problem.
I am a 50 year old woman who was a military wife and homeschooling mom. I was one of the top 3 students of my graduating class, yet ended up being a homemaker for about 2 decades. I find it enormously frustrating to try to explain to people how that impacts my life. Men very often just do not understand how taking time off from career to raise kids or support a spouse's career, etc, impacts your life and your prospects for earning an income on par with similarly aged and similarly educated, competent men.
So a) you aren't going to find a meaningful apples to apples comparison and b) any attempt to compare a woman's life to a man's in an apples to apples manner essentially denies that women are different from men and our lives are different from those of men. It tends to be very meaningful information.
"A new study on long-term unemployment from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis [1] found that the prospects for women over 50 darkened after the Great RecesAge and Gender Differences in Long-Term Unemployment: Before and After the Great Recessionsion. In 2006-7, before the downturn hit, less than a quarter of the unemployed in this group had been out of work for more than six months. By 2012-13, older jobless women accounted for half of the long-term unemployed."
From the study itself [1]:
"In sum, men and women of all ages experienced a rise in [long-term unemployment (LTU)] after the Great Recession. In this essay, we document the lesser-known fact that LTU affected older women more strongly. This group experienced a remarkable change: from a low pre-recession LTU-to-unemployment ratio of 14 percent to a post-recession rate of 50 percent."
[1] "Age and Gender Differences in Long-Term Unemployment: Before and After the Great Recession" https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
Yes, in 2012-2013 older women accounted for around half of long-term unemployed. Perhaps older men accounted for around half as well, which would show that the problem is primarily one of age?
And it doesn't need to be so extreme. For example, if older women are 50%, older men are 40%, and younger people are 10%, then age is still the main factor. It would also make sense to see women slightly higher than men, since at older ages, women start to significantly outnumber men.
But, on the other hand, if it's 50% older women, 10% older men, and 40% young people, then the article would be spot on.
It seems very odd that the article wouldn't just present those figures, so we could tell.
edit: In other responses, the proper data was found, and this is indeed an issue of age, for the most part, so sadly the article is misleading.
Women
25-54: 5.3%
50-54: 4.4%
55-59: 4.2%
60-64: 4.1%
65+ : 4.7%
25-54: 5.2%
50-54: 4.3%
55-59: 4.4%
60-64: 4.6%
65+ : 4.6%
But looking at the BLS long term unemployment statistics, that doesn't seem to be indicated more for women than men [2]. Looking at the rise in long term unemployment from 2008-2013:
Women
45-54: 222% (of 2008 long-term unemployment)
55-64: 284%
45-54: 218%
55-64: 341%
But what if the labor force participation rate dropped hugely for women and so they're not showing up as long-term unemployed since they aren't considered part of the labor force anymore? http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm
I'm not going to copy all the data in from that link, but women 55+ increased participation by 14.4% from 2004-2014 while men 55+ increased participation by 6.25%. That's not something I want to draw a great conclusion from since women born closer to the present are more likely to have jobs than women born farther in the past (ie. a 55 year old in 2014 is more likely to have had a career than a 55 year old in 2004 because the past sucked and whatnot). Given that men 25-54 decreased participation by 2.5% while women 25-54 decreased participation by 1.9%, I think it's fair to say that the 14.4% increase isn't just due to more women 10 years ahead in time having careers.
I have to say, this just looks like shoddy reporting. Based on the numbers, the article seems more clickbait than reporting. It's crappy that some people who are skilled are having trouble finding jobs. We're talking about people's lives here and it sucks to be out of a livelihood. But the thesis of the article - that women over 50 are specifically having a problem - doesn't seem to be borne out by the numbers that they in fact cite. The numbers do show long term unemployment up for those over 50, but even there it's up similar amounts overall (total long-term unemployment for those 16 and over is 245% of 2008 levels). Eye-balling it, it doesn't look like there's a spared group besides 16-19 year olds.
Am I hugely missing something?
You may have missed the nytimes.com domain. :)
It's incredible that a HN comment has better reporting than a whole professionally written New York Times article.
The article doesn't even mention what the first two women's education is (Chettie McAfee, Lynn Colafrancesco), it just complains that they can't find a job. VP title in the past means nothing, some companies give out VP title to thousands of employees to save the money, it's just cheaper than giving a raise.