Small businesses are beginning to make some gains in the jobs market.
Since last year’s slowdown in response to the sharp increase in National Insurance Contributions and the National Living Wage, Employment Hero’s March Jobs Report reveals that employment grew 2.1% month-on-month (MoM) and 5.3% year-on-year (YoY).
While the results are largely positive, not everyone has felt the uplift equally – chief among them: Boomers.
The Generation the Recovery Forgot
Drawn from 4,647 businesses and 125,932 employees, the Jobs Report figures show that Boomers are experiencing decline in the growing jobs market.
Boomer employment grew just 0.2% MoM in March, but is down -0.6% over the past three months and -4.7% YoY – a trajectory that stands in stark contrast to overall employment growth of 2.1% MoM and 5.3% YoY.
Pull in February’s figures and the picture sharpens further: while overall employment rose 2.0% MoM and 4.9% YoY, Boomer employment grew just 0.3% MoM and fell -5.8% YoY.
A Hiring Process That Isn’t Working for Older Workers
Some of this decline reflects natural attrition. According to OECD research, 6% of workers aged 55-64 exit the labour market entirely every year, compared to just 3% of those aged 30-54 – and fewer than half of workers aged 55-59 will still be in the same job five years later. Retirement, ill-health and caregiving responsibilities all play a role. But the data points to structural setbacks too, namely, by way of skills gaps.
Only 24% of workers aged 55-65 participate in job-related training in any given year, compared to 41% of those aged 45-54, according to the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills. For a jobs market increasingly shaped by new technologies and digital tools, that gap has consequences not just for workers’ confidence, but also in terms of how employers perceive their value.
Employment Hero’s data underlines this. Fifty-eight per cent of over-55s say they aren’t confident they could find a new job within three months if made redundant, and they are 25% less likely to feel confident adapting to new technologies than their younger counterparts – a perception that shapes how they present themselves before an employer has even formed a view.
That friction isn’t unique to older workers. Six in ten UK workers overall (61%) say the hiring process has made them think twice about looking for work at all. But for Boomer applicants, that friction is compounded by the reasonable suspicion that their age is already counting against them – a suspicion employment data does little to dispel. The Pearn Kandola Age Discrimination at Work report (2024) found that 88% of UK workers believe age discrimination exists in the workplace, and that older workers are 1.7 times more likely to have experienced it than younger workers.
The Part-Time Squeeze
The contraction of part-time work is making this worse. Part-time employment across UK small businesses fell -0.5% MoM in March as well as being down -0.4% over the past three months. For many Boomer workers, part-time roles aren’t simply a fallback, they’re a preferred route to winding down toward retirement without exiting the workforce entirely. As those roles become harder to find, the options narrow, and some older workers may find themselves choosing between full-time work they no longer want, or no work at all.
Could AI Be Part of the Answer?
One area worth watching as a potential remedy for ageism in hiring is Artificial Intelligence (AI). While Boomer anxieties about technology are real, they point to a gap in upskilling, as opposed to issues with the existence of the tech itself. Closing that gap, with AI skills as part of the focus, could matter more than most employers currently appreciate.
In fact, research from Fabian Stephany, Assistant Professor for Artificial Intelligence and Work at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute, found that AI skills on a CV can help to offset conventional disadvantages in hiring.
Older applicants and candidates without advanced degrees – groups that typically face lower call-back rates – saw their prospects improve substantially when AI skills were included on their résumés, with the effect strengthening further when those skills were backed by a recognised certificate. As Stephany puts it, AI skills can “act as a partial equaliser in hiring, shifting attention away from static characteristics toward demonstrable, current capabilities.”
Who the Recovery Is For
A recovery that consistently excludes one generation of workers is incomplete – and for the businesses losing Boomer employees, it comes at a real cost, leading to lower productivity and the erosion of experience and institutional knowledge that leaves with the exit of experienced employees.
While data doesn’t tell us whether employers are making a conscious choice to discriminate against older workers, it does point toward what needs to change. The businesses losing Boomer employees will feel it – in lost productivity, eroded institutional knowledge, and experience that walks out the door. But behind every data point are workers in their 50s or 60s who still have plenty to give, and deserve better than to be aged out of a labour market they helped build.
