An increasingly aging labor market, both in the private and public sectors. The number of active people over 55 years of age has shot up 62% in Spain in the last decade and 147% in 20 years. There are already more than 4.83 million workers or people who are actively seeking employment, which is equivalent to 20% of the total labor force of the country as a whole, that is, seven points more than they were ten years ago.
A report released this Tuesday by the Adecco Foundation found that the inclusion of seniors in the labor market has become a “strategic issue” for the economy, in a context of record aging, in which the average age of the population is increasing.
Thus, in Spain there are 133 people over the age of 64 for every 100 people under the age of 16, a proportion that, according to the Adecco Foundation, is growing “at an unbridled pace” given a life expectancy at all-time highs and a drop of the birth rate that places Spain as the second country in the EU with the lowest number of births.
By province, Castilla y León (24.9%), Asturias (23.7%) and the Basque Country (23.1%) are the regions with the highest proportion of people over 55 among the total active population, while the Balearic Islands (18.8%), Murcia (18.9%) and Andalusia (19.1%) present the lowest percentages. By provinces, Segovia (28.5%), Zamora (27.5%) and Lugo (27.3%) have the highest number of active seniors in their total working-age population.
According to the Adecco Foundation, the so-called baby-boomers, the largest generation in history, is already over the age of 55 and increases the proportion of senior citizens in Spain. “We live in a demographic hierarchy, which means that the number of births is interpolated to the ones that die. This influences the population and, therefore, a smaller available labor force, in addition to other effects such as greater pressure on the system Social Security,” the report warns.
In this sense, the Adecco Foundation shows its concern about the lack of generational relief in an active population among which there are few young people. To all this is the increase in the senior inactive population, which has not stopped growing in the last decade, especially after the Ia, “When not a few senior workers have been forced to retire,” says the Foundation.
“Given this reality, it is urgent to promote senior talent as an engine of competitiveness, so that the negative prejudices that relegate those over 55 years of age from the labor market are definitively discarded. Their contribution is key to the competitiveness of companies and to the sustainability of the country”, has defended Francisco Mesonero, general director of the Adecco Foundation.
