03/ 10/ 2008
by Charles R. McConnell
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 and its amendments of 1986, it is illegal to discriminate in hiring, promotion, layoff, etc., because of age. So these federal laws have surely eliminated age discrimination from all aspects of employment, right? Wrong. Age discrimination in employment is alive and flourishing as never before.
There is a marked disparity between what older workers are hearing from the media and what they're encountering in the reality of the workplace and job market. The same source that gave us "Boomers Discover Age Bias" also advises us via "Wanted: Older Workers" that workers age 50 and older are becoming an increasingly hot commodity on the job market. But with a modest amount of research we discover that in many companies where management praises the value of older workers, hiring and placement patterns don't reflect a belief in older workers.
Two significant forces are at work in bringing the baby-boomers face-to-face with age bias. First, the oldest of the boomers are now in their early 60s and the population of those 50 and older continues to grow, and owing to natural events and personal choices an increasing number of these workers are seeking new employment. Second, as economic times become more difficult and companies fold, merge or cut back, more workers of all ages find themselves in search of new jobs. And in the job market it's the younger workers who enjoy greater employability.
The legal threshold for age discrimination is 40. In a practical sense, many individuals in their 40s, especially educated professional and technical workers, are often as readily employable as those younger than 40. The practical threshold seems to be about age 50; and indeed it is workers in their 50s and older who most often encounter age bias in hiring.
It was recently reported that age-bias lawsuits were "surging." By implication, the fact that lawsuits are themselves becoming more numerous says much about the actual occurrences of age discrimination. The majority of potential charges of age discrimination never become formal complaints or lawsuits because of the expense and difficulty of pursuing them all the way.
Baby-boomers are mostly encountering age discrimination in two ways: layoffs and hiring. Concerning layoffs, some businesses attempt to cut costs by laying off higher-earning employees and replacing them with lower-priced help. But older employees tend to be longer-serving and thus higher paid. A company may claim that the reason for laying off these particular employees is to reduce salary expenses, but in a number of cases it has been ruled that this "salary discrimination" is de facto age discrimination because there's almost always a direct correlation between age with salary level.
Concerning hiring practices, many 50-plus job seekers have experienced mounting frustration as they repeatedly fail to secure for new employment. With hiring practices, however, it's far more difficult to prove age discrimination than it is with layoffs. There are usually multiple reasons available for rejecting a particular applicant. Even non-specific reasons such as "a more qualified candidate was selected" can't be disputed unless one has intimate knowledge of all other candidates and their qualifications.
Many job-seeking boomers manage to reach the interview stage through carefully written resumes. It's illegal for an employer to ask a job applicant's age and it's illegal to make an employment decision based on age, so why make it easy for an employer to infer age from a resume'? An applicant might cite the college attended and the degree held without using dates, or recount the most recent 20 years of experience and leave earlier experience reserved for the interview should one occur. The resume' is only a door-opener, and as such it should dwell on pertinent information, such as what the person knows and can do, rather than personal information like age, sex and race.
Once your resume gets your foot through the door, interviewing well is the next step to employment. Realizing that strong first impressions are often formed between people when meeting for the first time, many older job seekers are doing everything they can—dying hair and changing styles, dressing more youthfully, even undergoing cosmetic surgery—to come across as younger than they are. This should not be necessary, but displaced boomers are learning what older displaced workers learned before them—that age bias is rampant in business and changes in attitudes, not changes in laws, are needed to curb this form of discrimination.
