Over 50 and out of work

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What's it like for older people losing their job during the Covid pandemic?

Tamasin Ford speaks to 59 year old lighting crew chief Michael Heggett. He's worked on events like Princess Diana’s funeral, the London’s Olympic games and Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday concert. He had a fantastic career until Covid hit and he lost all his work. He fears he might never be employed again. Patrick Button, an assistant economics professor at Tulane University in the USA says his research shows that older workers are being disproportionately impacted by Covid. And Yvonne Sonsino from Mercer, a global human resources firm, says that the long term outcomes for older people are not good, particularly for their pensions?

(Picture credit: Getty Creative)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Tamison Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Global unemployment rates are
0:08.8	soaring, but is it the over 50s who are the most vulnerable to these job losses? They are going hungry.
0:16.9	They are becoming homeless. This is not a too many old people problem. This is a failure of the state to protect people of all ages who require social and economic protection in times like these.
0:31.2	We speak to one 59-year-old whose income completely disappeared.
0:35.5	I'm drifting into an age, well, I wonder would anyone employ me. I've been
0:40.2	looking for work. I've been applying for local jobs. I've got, I've got an interview as a temporary
0:46.7	postman coming up for Christmas. It's disastrous, really. That's all in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:56.1	The global unemployment rates are not looking good.
0:59.9	The United Nations International Labour Organisation, or ILO, is warning that hundreds of millions of people could be left without work due to the impact of coronavirus.
1:11.1	We know older people are more at risk of getting coronavirus,
1:15.6	but it now seems they're being hit hard on the job front too.
1:20.4	One of them is 59-year-old lighting crew chief Michael Hegett from Bournemouth in southern England.
1:26.7	He's worked on everything from Princess Diana's
1:29.3	funeral and London's Olympic Games opening ceremony to Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday concert, a stellar
1:36.8	career spanning decades. That is until COVID hit. I finished Stereophonics UK tour on the 16th of March.
1:47.7	I should have had a week off before starting the Pet Shop Boys' Greatest Hits Tour.
1:54.3	And by the 19th of March, I had lost about a year and a half's worth of work had gone completely. So basically my job, my
2:04.3	industry, my job fell off a cliff. I mean completely. And within a better week, I think,
2:10.7	everything I had on the books into next year, either postponed or completely cancelled.
2:16.3	I should have left the tour to do the Tokyo Olympic Games
2:19.1	and obviously that kind of stayed around for a few weeks
2:22.1	before the Japanese finally decided that that wasn't possible.
	...

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