Proving Workplace Age Bias Isn't Easy, But the Case Is Strong

It's illegal for employers to discriminate based on age. But age bias is widely acknowledged to be a key factor in job loss and hiring practices -- something that should be painfully obvious to even a casual reader of newspapers, which routinely run articles about laid-off midlife workers.

In 2008, layoff-related age discrimination claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were at a record high, and they were up 29 percent compared with 2007.

Discrimination in hiring is much harder to prove -- in fact, it's nearly impossible. But older workers don't doubt that it exists. A new Civic Ventures survey of older workers found most employees reporting strong anecdotal evidence of ageism in job searches.

Survey respondents spoke of being weeded out of applicant pools. Many reported "getting the green light" during a phone interview, then watching the interviewer's face fall when the applicant arrived for an in-person meeting. "No one called until I took the dates off my resume," one job seeker said. "Then, their eyes grew wide when I met with them, making their surprise hard to miss."

"Applicants told of interviewers using telltale phrases such as seeking someone who was 'the right fit' or 'fit the culture,' and rejecting them as 'overqualified' or 'too experienced,'" reported Terry Nagel, a Civic Ventures spokesperson. Some were asked questions about their stamina and plans for retirement.

"Respondents reported that one common practice is asking applicants the date they graduated from high school," she said. "Another way of trying to elicit an applicant's age was asking if the applicant knew a person at their college who attended during a certain time frame. Some were asked their age point-blank."

Several years ago, a researcher from the National Bureau of Economic Research set out to document ageism in hiring practices by measuring the response of employers to applicants of varying ages who responded to job postings.

Read about the results of that research and other studies at RetirementRevised.com.

Follow Mark Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RetireRevised

Comments

[humanbeing-rick]

Age discrimination is alive and well in corporate America. I have witnessed it many times.
Most of the senior engineers have been either outsourced or replaced by cheaper labor.
Most of America's engineering skills are being lost in the process.
We now seem to have a lot of tech junkies that are good at playing around the edges of technology, but could not engineer their own way out of a paper bag.
The college grads need mentoring by the seniors. That is how knowledge is shared and transferred from generation to generation. Today, knowledge and expertise are unpopular.
It is a real shame to see so many of my former workers get kicked to the curb and end up living poorly in their later years, due to no fault of their own, despite manu years of loyalty and service to the company. Today, loyalty is not appreciated or rewarded.
It is a strange world we have made for ourselves here.

[PhillyQuaker]

Next time you are interviewing for a job and the interviewer asks you, do you have any questions, say:
"Yes! When is the last time your company hired someone over 50?"

[PhillyQuaker]

Age discrimination is rampant. This is partially due to the fact that prospective employers do not want to add a fifty-something to their group health insurance plan. They believe older workers are sicker workers and worry that if the fifty-something needs to use their health insurance for expensive health treatment, the insurance company will jack up everyone's premium. And it will.

[William1950]

being in my late fifties... i know wherof you speak... i have been laid off from a job i held over twenty years.. the company went out of business... moved to another state, and find it almost impossible to get a job in my experience field. I now work for less than a third of what I used to earn. no benefits, yeah, age discrimination exists..

[enl8653]

I have been looking for work for months I'm 56, lost my last position due to back surgery. I have been able to get a few interviews, but as soon as the interviewer sees my age I can tell it's all over. I never reply to job ads that read "great position for college student" which translates to if you are out of your 20's don't bother. The media constantly harps how employers want mature workers, it sure doesn't seem to be the case here in SoCal. But if employers can list a job ad like the one I cite, then age discrimination is very alive and very well.

[yodaveg]

Lawyers recommend you file your age discrimination suits while you're young, giving you a better chance of surviving until the case is settled.

[steppenwolfsayshi]

If you think age discrimination is tough for older workers, its even tougher for younger workers. I've seen numerous newspaper ads that say "No one under 21/18/25 need apply." If you had an ad with "No one over 40 need apply" that would be a lawsuit over night. I don't know why that's acceptable.
It's pretty much a requirement now to put your graduation year on your resume now. If you don't, it looks like your hiding something.
Employers don't get the best person when they discrimante. It's a stupid policy. Workers shouldn't have to look a certain way to get a job.

[Aaror]

When someone just out of college can't get a job because of lack of experience that is fine, but when someone expects a big salary for their experience and can't get a job, that is discrimination?
Maybe it would be better if there was a test on how many push ups you can do in 2 minutes?

[SingingGuy]

So, push ups will determine whether you can do a job that requires experience and intellectual capacity.

Your inexperience seems to be showing already.

[Aaror]

At my current job we all do a pushup, situp, and mile run test every 6 months. Anyone who fails 3 times is out of the job. Special job, but we have had that rule for over a century, and it has worked well for us.
Yes, the numbers decrease for older folks, we joke that the 65 year olds can walk and still pass. Women don't have to do half as many push ups as men, etc.
But I guess my organization doesn't have much experience...

[Mark Miller - Huffpost Blogger]

Aaror, it is legitimate to consider experience in any hiring decision (no matter if the applicant is young or old); discrimination on the basis of age is illegal--just as it is illegal to discriminate based on gender or race.

[Aaror]

the point I was making is why is it not discriminatory to refuse to hire a younger person, but it is discriminatory to refuse to hire an older person.
There are a lot of reasons that you might want a younger person on your team, chief among them the salary you are offering. If I am offering a "starting salary," say 40K a year, I don't want someone who will take the job and immediatly look for promotion or complain about how his/her experience is not being valued.
I also don't want an employee who will look at my age and refuse to respect me. I have had that happen a few times, and guess what, it leads me to look for people my age or younger, so they won't have a condescending attitude towards me.
After the first time you fire someone for saying essentially "You are younger than me, so I don't have to listen to you," you think twice about hiring "experienced," workers.

[SingingGuy]

If the government wished to prove that companies were discriminating because of age, they could set about to investigate the practice. They could set up "stings" where their own investigators could infiltrate HR divisions of major companies and hear what is said behind closed doors as well as be directed on company policies for weeding out resumes.

If companies feared that they could get caught at their dirty little practices, perhaps they would think twice about the practice. Also. if having a certain percentage of workers ( or hiring a certain percentage of workers) over the age of 50 were given the weight of the Equal Opportunity Act, that might change some company attitudes.

We can't have a society where if you lose your job after age 50, you are discarded by the job market. It becomes a further drain on the middle class and the economical well being of our whole society.