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August 2008
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Adding Life to Years
Ageism lurks on the hiring line
This should be a great time to be an older worker. Mandatory retirement has been eliminated. People are living longer, and many of today's elders are healthier and considerably wealthier than previous generations. What's more, older workers are needed more than ever.
Thanks to the baby boom, the earliest members of which began applying for Social Security earlier this year, there likely will not be enough young workers to replace the older ones. According to a forecast by the Employment Policy Foundation, the United States is facing a labor shortage of 4.8 million workers in 10 years and nearly 20 million in 20 years. By 2012 nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforce will be 55 or older, up from 14 percent in 2002. This situation is unprecedented in U.S. history.
And yet, with all that supply of older manpower (and womanpower) and the need for it to remain on the job, older workers are likely to have a hard time finding a good job. I have friends in the technology sector with decades of experience dating to the adolescence of IBM. But when they apply for jobs they say they can't make it past the resume-screening stage. Employers either don't believe they know the latest technology or they think an old dog can't be taught new tricks. They get passed over for younger applicants, they say.
My friends are not alone. In 2007, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 19,103 complaints of age discrimination, a 15 percent increase from the year before. EEOC investigators found conclusive evidence supporting the charge of discrimination in fewer than 40 percent of the cases. But it's interesting to note that at the same time complaints of age discrimination are rising, complaints about other kinds of job discrimination - gender, race, etc. - are not.
Two months ago at the AARP international Forum on the Future Workforce in Brussels, Belgium, Marcie Pitt- Catsouphes, director of the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, cited a study that identified age as the No. 1 barrier for U.S. job candidates 45 and older. A separate survey found 44 percent of workers of all ages felt older workers were treated unfairly compared to younger job candidates during the job-search process.
It appears those suspicions are well founded. A 2005 study had 4,000 pairs of women with identical qualifications apply for jobs in two states, Massachusetts and Florida. Result: the younger applicants (ages 35-45) were 42 percent more likely to be offered an interview than the older workers (ages 50-62) in Massachusetts and 46 percent more likely in Florida.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 is supposed to protect anyone 40 or older from employment discrimination based on age. But discrimination is a tough crime to prove. A visitor to the blog (an online discussion forum) of human resources consultant Ethan A. Winning told of friends in their mid- to late 50s who had been searching for jobs for more than a year. They couldn't even get an interview despite having a wealth of experience, academic credentials, the latest technical skills and excellent references - all the stated qualifications.
The human-resources expert responded that he had no solution. There are too many ways around age-discrimination laws, he said. In fact, in the 20 years since he first wrote about this issue, he said, “things have only gotten worse.”
In my role as director of the Sanford Center for Aging, I have often enlightened local employers about the advantages of hiring older workers. Studies show, for example, that older workers remain with employers twice as long, and have better attendance records than younger workers. The center is about to take the next step, and that is to develop an enterprise to help Nevada elders who want to transition between work settings or return to the workforce. It will also help local employers in need of reliable, mature professional employees. Senior-Pro Ventures, as we're calling the older worker program, will provide assessment services and coaching for the older worker as well as make referrals to employers. It will also provide employers help with sensitizing the workplace regarding such issues as intergenerational communication. If you're interested in learning more about Senior-Pro Ventures or in helping us develop it, feel free to contact me directly.
In the meantime, if you're an employer, invite the qualified older applicant to interview. If you're an older adult who needs or wants to work, don't sell yourself short. And if you see or experience discrimination, voice it.
(Lawrence J. Weiss, Ph.D. is director of the University of Nevada, Reno Sanford Center for Aging and an adjunct associate professor of medicine. He welcomes your comments on this column. Write to him at weisslj@unr.edu or c/o Sanford Center for Aging, Mail Stop 146, Reno, NV 89557-0146.)