Unemployment rates, by age

Unemployment tends to decline with age

• Although adults aged 25 to 54 saw a marginal decrease in their unemployment rates from 2002 to 2003, the unemployment rate for youth increased slightly and continued to be the highest of all age groups at 13.8%. With unemployment rates of 6.5% and 5.9%, respectively, adults aged 25 to 54 years and older people aged 55 years and over had much lower rates.
• On average, 385,000 young people aged 15 to 24 years looked for work in 2003. Just over half were teenagers (aged 15 to 19), a group with unemployment rates consistently higher than those of 20- to 24-year-olds: in 2003, the unemployment rate for teenaged youth was 18.1%, well above the 10.9% rate of people aged 20 to 24.
• Although young people have always had higher unemployment rates than adults, they now account for a smaller proportion of unemployed people than they did three decades ago. The aging of the population in recent decades has altered the face of unemployment. Almost half of all unemployed people were 15 to 24 years old in 1976, compared with nearly a third in 2003.

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