The job market for older workers is even tougher thancommonly believed.

That’s the word from the Schwartz Center for Economic PolicyAnalysis at the New School for Social Research, which has begunissuing “Older Workers at a Glance,” a report of key labor marketstatistics for workers over 55 as a supplement to its monthlyanalysis of market trends.

According to the report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporteda historically low headline unemployment rate for older workers of3.5 percent in August, a figure used as evidence bolstering a claimthat people can continue to work if they have inadequateretirement income.

However, it says that the official unemployment rate overstatesthe strength of the labor market for older workers. It points outthat “an increasing share of older workers are in ‘bad jobs’” thatpay less than two-thirds of the median wage, which stood at $880per week in August. In July of 2016, the report said, 29.1 percentof older workers held such “bad jobs,” compared with 27.0 percentin July 2006.

Median wages for older workers “have been flat for decades,” thereport said, and stagnation “makes it harder to save for retirementbecause workers wanting to increase saving must cut currentconsumption rather than merely forego increases in consumption.”That makes saving difficult even if employers offerretirement plans.

There’s also the factor of labor force participation, which hasincreased “substantially” for women aged 55-64 in the last severaldecades, according to the report. However, the labor forceparticipation of men in that age category “declined until the early1990s and then increased somewhat” — but that increase has obscuredthe decrease of labor force participation among older men who lackcollege educations. That pushes them out of the labor force withretirement savings that are inadequate to pay their expenses duringretirement.

In addition, the report said that 51 percent of older workershave no pension and that “[a]t any point in time, less than half offull-time private sector workers participate in a retirement plan,mostly because their employer does not sponsor a plan."