Covid-19 unemployment risk for older workers

Older workers may be more likely to be subject to age discrimination during the pandemic. — Filepic/The Star

WHILE most of those affected by unemployment during the Covid-19 crisis were youths, the biggest increase in unemployment percentage has come from the older age groups.

Tabulating data from the Statistics Department (Dosm), Chai Sen Tyng, a Senior Research Officer at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)’s Malaysian Research Institute on Ageing found that while the unemployment rate is the highest (12.6% at Q3 2020) for the 15-24 age group, the biggest change in unemployment rate between Q4,2019 and Q3,2020 is the 55-64 age group, where unemployment jumped from 0.6% to 4.2%.