How to mitigate mid-life career bumps: Sarah Coles
We tend to make assumptions about what life will look like in future, and while in our 20s and 30s we might have been prepared for setbacks, most people expect to have their lives reasonably on track by their 40s and 50s. Alarmingly, there’s a growing number of people in mid-life who have seen their lives derailed entirely.
Stacey Duguid, a former fashion editor for Elle in her early 50s, went viral for her social media posts about being unable to find a job in mid-life, and being advised to hide her age and experience in order to stand a better chance. It’s an all-too familiar experience among my friends and peers.
The trends are harder to see from official data. Women aged between 50 and 64 are less likely to be unemployed than men of the same age, which would seem to indicate they find it easier to find and keep work. However, that’s not the full story, because they’re much more likely to be economically inactive than men of the same age.
Women face a number of challenges at this stage of life. Many have ageing parents or partners who need care, some will be suffering ill health – including symptoms related to the menopause. Given that women have lower average wages than men, women may have decided that the battle to find work is impossible, so they may have given up and focused on other people’s needs. This would make them fall into the inactive column, so they don’t appear to be unemployed from the data.
To get a better understanding of what’s going on, AJ Bell Money Matters ran some research, and discovered that both men and women struggle in the jobs market in mid-life. It’s not just about getting a job, it’s also harder to get a promotion or a pay rise. However, the challenge for women is particularly difficult. Almost half of women (47%) said they found it harder to get a job in mid-life, compared to earlier in life, and 40% of men agreed. Meanwhile, 51% of mid-life women have found it harder to get a promotion, compared to 42% of men, and 48% of women have found it harder to get a pay rise, compared to 43% of men.
The trends can’t be laid entirely at the door of ageism. As anyone gets more senior, there are fewer roles available. In an era where businesses are increasingly de-layering and taking out levels of management, this means even fewer opportunities for people at this stage in their career. However, undoubtedly ageism is playing its part, as some businesses write off older workers as lacking energy, being slow to adapt or not being engaged as they count down to retirement. In 2017/18, a report by the Women and Equalities Committee found widespread evidence of ageism, particularly in recruitment and when selecting people for redundancy.
The report found that being a woman amplifies the difficulties in finding work and gaining promotions, with assumptions being made about women in mid-life as well as decisions based on ‘lookism.’ There is a risk that some workplaces still unconsciously reflect the ‘double standard of ageing’ identified over 50 years ago by writer and social commentator Susan Sontag, judging men on their wealth and success – which may increase as they get older – and women on their youth and beauty – which may not.
For those who are out of work in mid-life, the impact can be horrendous. It hits in three ways – through losing your income, taking longer to get a new job than you expected, and then having less time to rebuild your career and finances before retirement. If you have emergency savings, you could spend your way through them. If your savings are spent completely, you may need to dip into long-term investments, at a time of life when you expected to be building assets rather than losing them. If the problem persists, you could end up in debt or being forced to sell your home.
For those who are in work, but being overlooked for pay rises and promotions, it puts a lid on your lifestyle both now and in retirement. The gender pensions gap is 48% according to the latest HMRC figures, and many women who have had career gaps or worked part-time for a period will be relying on more financially rewarding work later in life to close the gap. Without promotions or pay rises, they either have to make significant compromises in their lifestyle today or consider working later in life or retiring on a lower income.
Nothing will make this process easy, but there are some things people can put in place to protect themselves from the worst of it. A robust savings safety net is essential: as a rough rule of thumb, you should have enough savings to cover three to six months’ worth of essential spending in an easy access account. If you’re worried about your job, you may want to hold closer to six months’ worth.
Think about the impact on your pension as early as possible too. When you’re modelling how much you should be paying into a pension, many pension calculators will assume you’ll stay in work throughout your career and see steady promotions and pay rises. Consider what would happen if you were out of work for a period, your pay dropped, or you couldn’t work for as long as possible. It might be worth seeing if you can increase contributions now to protect your pension against the unexpected later down the line.
You can also take steps to put yourself in the best possible position in the recruitment market. It’s useful to build your network both in real life and online. You may be able to update your skills too – either through workplace training or in your own time. It’s important to beware of the scammers who operate in this market. Some offer jobs that don’t exist before asking for up-front payment, some pretend to be head-hunters to harvest your information, some will offer services for a fee, and deliver little or no value. They prey on people’s desperation at such a difficult time, so it pays to be on your guard.
It may be difficult to imagine that this struggle could lie in your future, so worrying about it might seem unnecessary. However, none of us can predict what’s going to happen to us, so it’s better to make the assumption that times might be tough than it is to assume everything will be fine. That way, being wrong comes as a pleasant surprise rather than a nasty shock.
House prices are lower
It has been an arid summer for the property market. Nationwide figures out this week showed property prices had clung onto growth – up 1.6% in a year. However, since April, average non-seasonally adjusted prices are down £3,415. The climate looks equally challenging for the autumn too.
This isn’t a surprise given the difficult backdrop. Prices remain close to record highs and mortgage rates have been creeping up. Global instability has meant a volatile oil price, which raises fears of inflation and higher interest rates. These are getting priced into the mortgage market for fixed term rates, forcing some buyers to put their plans on hold.
An awful lot of what happens next depends on developments in the wider world. More stability would encourage buyers and sellers to get stuck in, and we’d be likely to see prices rise again as we enter a period that’s traditionally busier. However, instability has become such a fixture on the global political stage that we can’t rely on calm returning any time soon.