If you’re over 50, employed and getting a little jittery about the safety of your job due to the cooling economy, that’s understandable. Although the unemployment rate is still just 3.7% — near its 50-year low — monthly job growth has slowed to 158,000, compared to 223,000 a month a year ago. And the 130,000 jobs created in August failed to meet economists’ expectations.
“The labor market is brutal for older workers,” says Carl E. Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and co-author of the article with Maria Heidkamp, director of the New Start Career Network at the Heldrich Center.