An Overview of the Situation of Workers over 50 in the Private Sector

Using exhaustive data covering all private sector and state-owned firms in France, we describe the distribution of workers aged more than 50, across sectors, regions and different size of plants. We also describe trends of evolution of this distribution between 1995 and 2000. These workers are overrepresented in skilled jobs, despite their lower level of initial training. A higher share of these workers among the labour force can also be found in industrial sectors and sectors such as finance, real estate business or post and telecommunications, while services usually face a low share of older workers among the labour force. However the share of older workers in a sectors labour force is a misleading way to interpret firms behaviour toward older workers, since it usually stems from employment trends within this sector rather than crowding-out strategies. The flow of older workers out of employment is actually found to be larger in manufacturing industries than in service industries between 1995 and 2000. We also find evidence that unskilled workers are crowded-out faster than skilled workers for those aged 50 to 54 in manufacturing. Finally, older workers receive higher wages than the average and this wage gap between older workers and younger ones is increasing with qualification. However, it tends to decrease between 1995 and 2000 for workers aged 50 to 54.