Many unemployed seniors feel anything but in demand. That sentiment is borne out by research from Aalborg University.

The country’s companies are reluctant to hire new employees over 55

61-year-old Kenneth Hemstedt told Politiken in May that he had applied for 140 jobs over the course of six months without success and felt that his age played an unspoken role. He has since found work. Foto: Jacob Ehrbahn

There is strong demand for older workers among Danish companies – or so the message goes, over and over again. And there is a full state pension on top of wages, along with tax-free cash bonuses for those who extend their working lives.

A sense of being courted is, to put it mildly, not how 63-year-old Tommy Sørensen experiences the situation as an unemployed senior. In an opinion piece in Politiken over the weekend, he described life as an unemployed later in life.

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The country’s companies are reluctant to hire new employees over 55

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