Long-term unemployment in Spain: 42% of jobless are over 50

The ordeal of losing a job at 50: "They make you feel worthless"

In Spain, turning fifty and losing employment shifts from an accident to a statistical sentence. Of the 2.7 million unemployed recorded in the latest Labour Force Survey (EPA), 839,200 —30%— are over that age. But the chilling data appears when looking only at long-term unemployment: 42% of those searching for work for more than a year are over 50. That means 457,900 people out of a total of one million. In this bracket, more than half —54.6%— have been without work for twelve months or longer, compared to 19% of those under 25 or 43% of those aged 45 to 49.

The story of Áurea Notario, a 50-year-old from Albacete, sums up this dead end. In 2017, she had to leave the supermarket where she had worked for twenty years. With a minor daughter to support, she began a round of interviews where she was always rejected. "At fifty, you are sidelined. You feel young, but they make you feel worthless," she explains. Eight years later, after chaining together uncontracted caregiving jobs and suffering depression, she has returned to live with her parents. "I married at nineteen and have been independent ever since. Returning home makes you think: what has my life come to?"

Why does long-term unemployment hit harder after 50?

The pattern is not accidental. Andreu Cruañas, former president of the temporary employment agency association, attributes it to a cocktail of burdens and rigidities. People over fifty often have mortgages, children studying, or elderly parents to support, so they rarely accept poorly paid positions or fixed-discontinuous contracts —which count as employed in Ministry statistics even if they go months without working—. Added to this is lower geographic mobility: they cannot leave a city where their children are enrolled in school or a partner has a job.

Some add ageism, discrimination based on age stereotypes in hiring processes, and a lack of training in new technologies. The result is an uncomfortable paradox: seniors are now the only net driver of the labor market. Over twenty years, economically active people over fifty have increased from 4 to 8.7 million, a 116% rise, while those under 25 fell by 27.3%. Sectors like construction, hospitality, health, and digital technology are looking for staff without finding them. "While they don't work, they don't pay taxes or contribute. Spain's ability to solve this challenge will define the future of pensions," concludes Cruañas.

Juan Antonio’s case: 39 years contributed and back to his in-laws’ house

Juan Antonio Gil, a 60-year-old from Zaragoza, had everything settled until life sent him back to square one. At 55, married with an emancipated son, he was forced to move into his in-laws' house. His vvife cares for them and cannot work, so the four survive on his in-laws' pension, the €480 subsidy he receives, and help from Cáritas. In 2021, during the pandemic, he had to close the café where he had worked since he was sixteen. "Everyone tells me they'll call me soon, but they never do," he recounts.

The conversation quickly turned to a rougher territory: competition for low-skilled jobs. Some participants argue that hiring migrant workers —often willing to accept conditions that a Spaniard with family burdens rejects— displaces seniors from hospitality and retail. Others respond that the problem is not foreign labor, but structural precariousness and the lack of active employment policies to retrain older workers. The exchange of arguments becomes heated, but underneath lies a legitimate question: why does a sector that claims it cannot find staff systematically dismiss those who have been doing the job for twenty years?

"From 40 onwards, if you lose your job, things get tough"

Not all diagnoses agree. Some lower the critical age: from 37 or 38, becoming unemployed already carries a high probability of turning into that hell. Others recall that Áurea and Juan Antonio’s generation worked twenty and thirty-nine consecutive years, something many young people today have never experienced. And some invert the narrative: people in their fifties hoping to be fired to collect severance pay and subsidies. The picture is plural and contradictory, like almost everything else.

The system, some argue, is fundamentally flawed: keeping people working until 65 —and beyond—in factories, cleaning, or construction when the body no longer responds. Retirement moves further away while age-based screening comes earlier. "Retire at 71, but at 37 you're already discarded from every offer," summarizes one of the most repeated comments. The macroeconomic consequence is what Cruañas pointed out: each inactive senior is one less taxpayer and greater pressure on pensions. Spain's ability to reintegrate this group will determine, sooner rather than later, the sustainability of the system. With these numbers, retraining should be a priority. It remains marginal.