The reasons are myriad and complex, especially because the percentage of older employees, in general, has been increasing overall. Still, women are apt to leave the workforce to raise children or care for aging parents, and tend to have more gaps in their resumes than their male counterparts.
But, that’s small comfort to out-of-work female professionals who have been networking and self-promoting themselves for years at a time, only to come up jobless when their younger peers have less difficulty doing so. As a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis indicates, more than half of the long-term unemployed since the recession are older women. And their plight doesn’t show any signs of improving anytime soon.