9/26/2015 – To Get a Job in Your 50s, Maintain Friendships in Your 40s (The New York Times)

We hear it all the time: People who are over 50 take longer to find jobs than younger people. Connie Wanberg, a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, had long heard gloom-and-doom stories to that effect, but she wondered how strong the data was to support them.

Very, as it turned out. According to a study by Professor Wanberg and others, job seekers over 50 were unemployed 5.8 weeks longer than those from the ages of 30 to 49. That number rose to 10.6 weeks when the comparison group was from 20 to 29. Professor Wanberg and three other researchers — Darla J. Hamann, Ruth Kanfer and Zhen Zhang — arrived at those numbers by analyzing and synthesizing hundreds of studies by economists, sociologists and psychologists.

Read the full article in The New York Times.