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- iHaveNet.com: Career
By Liz Wolgemuth
In this economy, older workers may be confronting more age discrimination
Americans have long had a sense of humor about age that has no equivalent in attitude about gender or race. During a presidential campaign in which the top contenders were a woman, a black man, and a 71-year-old, it was clear that the only acceptable jokes were about the one candidate old enough--as Jay Leno told it one night--to have saved the White House from the British in 1814.
Now, just a year later, the jokes seem a bit stale. The nation faces the worst job market in two decades, and the unemployment rate for workers 55 and older has hit a post-Great Depression high of 7 percent. Older workers are laboring through significantly longer job searches than their younger colleagues, and the
More than 2 million workers ages 55 and older were unemployed and looking for work in June--the greatest number ever, by far. You can blame the recession and the size of the baby boom generation for such a high figure. But there are more insidious causes as well. Older workers used to be something of a protected class when companies were downsizing, says Michael Campion, a professor at
Stubborn stereotypes. Today's older workers are healthier, more able, and more interested in working. Yet Campion's research details common stereotypes about older workers: They're more expensive, harder to train, less adaptable, less motivated, lower performers, and less energetic. These negative stereotypes often directly contradict research about older workers' performance. For example, companies may believe that older workers will give them fewer years of work and may be less inclined to invest in their training, but research suggests that an older worker often stays with a company longer than a younger one, says Bob McCann, a professor of management communication at the
Ageism can be difficult to research, since inferred stereotypes are rarely made explicit. In one effort, a 1999 study published in the
Perceptions about older workers aren't all negative, Campion's research shows. "A common stereotype is that older employees are more stable, dependable, honest, trustworthy, loyal, committed to the job, and less likely to miss work or turn over quickly," he writes. Some employers have made a public effort to recruit older workers. In 2004,
Still, the rate at which older workers find new jobs lags that of their younger peers.
To help keep older workers in the game, millions of stimulus dollars are going toward training them for jobs in growing fields, particularly healthcare and green-collar work. At
When Age Bias Hinders the Job Hunt | Jobs & Careers
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