Pardon Me While I Rant About Ageism

(Note: I am also posting this article to my other blog, Divinipotent Daily.) 

"I could not, at any age, be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on."
 ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This morning a newsletter from The Boomer Blog (which is exactly what it sounds like) included a link to an article that infuriated me. The title: "Age can affect job performance and more." The author, Linda Stollings, is a personal fitness trainer. She notes that "According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), workers aged 55 and older will account for almost 50 percent of projected labor force growth between 2002-2012." And then she goes on to say, "Now that’s a problem any way you look at it." Really? Any way you look at it?

It's certainly a problem if you look through Ms. Stollings' eyes, where the view is filled with fat, old, self-indulgent fools who drank too much and ate too much throughout their lives and are now paying the price. They're in declining health and plagued by slip and fall injuries suffered while stumbling around the office. And let's not overlook the rising health care costs associated with aging workers. Ms. Stollings doesn't.

After reading her article, I wrote the following comment:

"While I realize the author is just trying to publicize her fitness training business, I have to object to the negative stereotypes this article promotes. Older workers who lose their jobs must spend twice as long hunting for new ones as younger people. This just adds to their problems. Why not write about what a drag it is to hire women, since they might have babies and take maternity leave? Or what about young people? They don’t know anything and training is expensive. Think that’s ridiculous? That’s how this article sounds to me."

"Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed."
~ Anthony Powell

Ms. Stollings might have quoted a different AARP statistic — the one that found 60 percent of workers aged 45 to 74 have either experienced or witnessed age discrimination. Ageism may be against the law in all fifty states, but it remains one of the last "acceptable" prejudices. I've been trying to figure out why that is. Here's what puzzles me: Most prejudices are rooted in fear of "others" — people and things that are unfamiliar and seem not like ourselves. But aging is different. It's happening to all of us all of the time. Why are we so afraid of our futures? 

"No wise man ever wished to be younger."
~ Jonathan Swift

It's Time to Retire "Retirement Age"

The term "retirement age" has lost its relevance. When the eligibility age for Social Security was first set in 1935, the average American lifespan was 61.7 years. Today, thanks to some great leaps forward in medicine, it's 77.8 years.

Longer Lives = Longer Careers. A rising share of Americans over age 50 are not planning to retire any time soon — some because they don't want to and many because they can't afford to. A 2007 study by McKinsey & Company — completed well before home values and stock investments evaporated — found this:

• 38% of Baby Boomers said it was "extremely likely" that they would work beyond the traditional retirement age — primarily for financial reasons
• only 15% said it was unlikely

But where will these older workers find employment? Although layoffs are rampant in every age group, anecdotal evidence suggests higher-salaried, older workers are affected more than most. Older workers also face bigger hurdles finding new jobs. Even in 2005, a two-state sample study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that younger workers were 40% more likely to be called in for an interview than those over 50. Overall, the study concluded that older workers stay unemployed approximately three times longer than younger ones.

Things are even more dismal in specific business sectors. Writing for MediaPost, advertising industry executive Brent Bouchez notes that "nationwide, less than 5% of agency personnel are over 50"; similarly, a 2008 article in the New York Times reported this: "In an industry survey, a majority of technology companies candidly said they would not hire anyone over 40."

In addition to being illegal, that discriminatory policy is also just plain dumb. More about this in future posts.

Sources:

• "Why Baby Boomers Will Need to Work Longer," McKinsey Quarterly, November 2008
• "Do Older Workers Face Discrimination?" by Joanna N. Lahey, An Issue in Brief, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, July 2005
• "Maybe Peter Pan Should Move to Madison Avenue" by Brent Bouchez, MediaPost Engage:Boomers blog, June 22, 2009
• "For a Good Retirement, Find Work. Good Luck." by Steve Lohr, New York Times, June 22, 2008