Automation and age discrimination slam older workers

It’s getting tougher for older workers, with many finding that they can’t retire—or retire as fully—as they might want to, thanks to inadequate retirement savings, lack of pensions or high levels of debt thanks to medical bills, student loans or other financial obligations.

According to a report in Next Avenue, age discrimination by employers is common both for jobseekers and workers trying to stay in the workplace. And an AARP survey finds that, among people age 45 and older working full- or part-time or looking for work, “more than nine in 10 older workers see age discrimination as common.”

Not only that, but 61 percent of respondents say they’ve personally seen or experienced it, with women more likely to have been witness to it or in the crosshairs themselves.

Ageism and ageism plus racism

And it’s worse for people of color; while 59 percent of whites reported seeing or experiencing age discrimination, 60 percent of Latinos and more than three quarters of African-American respondents have come up against it.

And even though older workers are increasingly seeking to rejoin or stay in the workplace, they’re not being judged on merit but rather on age, the report says. If they lose a job, it’s tougher to find another; if they have a job, it’s getting tougher to keep it.

This comes at a time when more older workers are looking for work, according to a report from ABC News, older women in particular.

According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are several reasons for the surge in older workers—numbers indicate that just in Florida, statewide in 2013 there were 233,000 women 65 years and over who were working; in 2017, that jumped to 316,000—many are retirees who didn’t expect to have to come back to work.

Ageism in the workplace

Survey results indicate that older job applicants are increasingly turned away. In fact, it says, since turning 40, a shocking 30 percent of respondents have come up against one or more of six ageist problems in the workplace, with 17 percent being subjected to two or more:

• not getting hired because of their age
• hearing negative age-related remarks about themselves from a colleague
• passed over for advancement because of age
• hearing negative age-related remarks about themselves from a supervisor
• being laid off, fired or forced out of job because of their age
• being denied access to training or professional development opportunities because of age

Close to half—44 percent—of respondents who’ve applied for a new position in the past two years said they were asked for age-related information such as birth dates and graduation years. That kind of information makes it easy to screen out older applicants, and when employers ask for it older workers hesitate to even apply, according to AARP.

About a third of older workers fear not being able to find a new job if they lose the one they have, and nearly half of them point to age discrimination as the reason.

And they’re not wrong; government data, says the report, show “that nearly one third of workers 55 and older who lose their jobs are unemployed a financially dangerous six months or more. By contrast, just 18 percent of those ages 16 to 54 are out of work similar periods.”

Watered-down law

And they don’t think they’ll get much, if any, backup if they pursue a discrimination case; just three percent said they’d consider filing a formal complaint with an employer or government agency.

Again, they’re not wrong; although the original Age Discrimination in Employment Act offered similar protections to those for gender, religion or national origin, the report says, the law “has been weakened over time by a series of court rulings that have narrowed the law’s scope and sharply increased what’s required to prove a case.”

Threat of automation

And there’s one more potential obstacle to older workers’ presence in the workplace: automation.

While it could be an aid to such workers, taking over the physical demands of some jobs, it could just as easily replace many who would otherwise be able to find much-needed employment.

According to 24/7 Wall Street, a new study from Marsh & McLennan indicates that there’s a demographic shift underway, with the working-age (15–64) population shrinking and the number of elderly (65 and older) rising. By 2030 the elderly population in 15 countries will be notably higher: more than 10 percent higher in South Korea and Singapore, about 7.5 percent higher in China and about 6 percent higher in the U.S.

And with this demographic shift going on, there will be a lot more elderly looking for work or remaining in the workplace—as long as automation serves as an assist rather than driving them out.

The study finds that an aging workforce forces companies more quickly to adopt more automation. The data indicate that 40 percent of the variation among countries in the adoption of industrial robots is explained by age alone.

Says the report, “Marsh & McLennan devised a weighted-average score that expresses the automation risk for older workers. In countries where workers perform tasks that can be reasonably easily automated, the risk score is high; in countries where higher-skilled work is more common, the risk score is lower.”

The risk score in the U.S. was fortunately not among the highest of the 15 countries studied, but that’s not really a reason to cheer; it has the sixth lowest score.

The study concludes, “Welfare spending, industrial shifts, financial support, and training and education will be key to preventing the widespread displacement of older workers. Without the proper interventions, societies stand to face serious fallouts as a result of these trends. Un- and underemployment, widening inequality, and severe talent shortages will worsen in countries where older workers are not properly incorporated into firms’ digitization and automation strategies.”