More Middle-Aged Men Face Permanent Layoff, Study Says : Unemployment: All workers are now more likely to have to look for a new job rather than wait for recall, but the increase has been most pronounced for men 35 to 54.

Middle-aged men are twice as likely to lose their jobs in a permanent layoff as they were 13 years ago, a development with a profound impact on American families, a study released Thursday said.

The increase has been particularly pronounced for men between the ages of 35 and 54, according to the study, written by Harvard University economics professor James Medoff.

“About 1 million men a year suffer this devastating midlife job crisis at a time when their financial and family responsibilities are the greatest,” said Joseph Cooper, president of the National Study Center, which published the paper. “Millions more face the threat.”

The National Study Center is an offshoot of the liberal congressional Democratic Study Group.

In the most recent recession, 86% of workers who lost their jobs were on permanent layoff and 14% expected a recall. In the previous four recessions, just 56% of the job losses were permanent.

“Male workers in their prime earning years accounted for a substantial majority of this increased unemployment due to permanent layoff,” the study said. “They experienced a greater increase . . . than any other group.”

In 1980, when overall unemployment was 7.1%, fewer than 5% of that total consisted of middle-aged men whose old jobs had been permanently eliminated. In 1992, when the jobless rate was a comparable 7.4%, 11% were middle-aged men on permanent layoff.

Also, a comparison of what Medoff called the permanent unemployment rate from 1967-71 and from 1987-92 shows that “males have become much more vulnerable to unemployment due to permanent layoff than have females,” said the paper, titled “The Midlife Job Crisis.”

Teen-agers and males 16 to 34 are still more vulnerable to permanent layoff than middle-aged men, but the rate of occurrence for the older men has been increasing faster.

Middle-aged men are becoming more likely candidates for permanent layoff because they are paid significantly more than other workers: 20% more than women of the same age in the same occupation, 21% more than men 16 to 34, and 4% more than men 55 and older.

Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.) said the trend documented in the paper “is especially disturbing because of the impact on American families when the principal breadwinner loses his job.”

According to Medoff, wives of men who are permanently laid off are 24% more likely to be working outside the home. And the ramifications for families of women pushed into the labor force by economic necessity are quite different from those for families of women choosing to work, he said.

“In particular, the need for both parents to work solely to make ends meet is likely to have deleterious effects on their children’s well-being,” he said.

Economist Martin Regalia of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the trends noted in the Medoff paper reflect the decimation of middle-management jobs in recent years and are not likely to change soon.

“Fewer managers are managing more people and processes with today’s modern computer equipment,” he said. “That is a basic fact of life, and it’s not going to change.”