You're how old? We'll be in touch

By Ashton Applewhite, Published The Straits Times, 10 Sep 2016

It might not seem that Mrs Hillary Clinton and Mr Donald Trump have much in common. But they share something important with each other and with a whole lot of their fellow citizens. Both are job seekers. And at ages 68 and 70, respectively, they are part of a large group of Americans who are radically upending the concept of retirement.

This year, almost 20 per cent of Americans 65 and older are working. Some of them want to; many need to. The demise of traditional pensions means that many people have to keep earning in their 60s and 70s to maintain a decent standard of living.

These older people represent a vast well of productive and creative potential. Veteran workers can bring deep knowledge to the table, as well as well-honed interpersonal skills, better judgment than the less experienced and a more balanced perspective. They embody a natural resource that's increasing: the social capital of millions of healthy, educated adults.

Why, then, are well over 1.5 million Americans older than 50, people with decades of life ahead of them, unable to find work?

The underlying reason isn't personal, it's structural. It's the result of a network of attitudes and institutional practices we can no longer ignore.

The problem is ageism - discrimination on the basis of age. A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botox and hair transplants before interviews - and these are skilled, educated, white guys in their 20s, so imagine the effect further down the food chain.

Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it. At 64, I'm fortunate not to have been one of them, as I work at the American Museum of Natural History, a truly all-age-friendly employer.

I write about ageism, though, so I hear stories all the time.

The 51-year-old Uber driver taking me to Los Angeles International Airport at dawn a few weeks ago told me about a marketing position he thought he was eminently qualified for. He did his homework and nailed the interview. On his way out of the building he overheard: "Yeah, he's perfect, but he's too old."

I'm lucky enough to get my tech support from Mr J. K. Scheinberg, the engineer at Apple who led the effort that moved the Mac to Intel processors. A little restless after retiring in 2008, at 54, he figured he would be a great fit for a position at an Apple store Genius Bar, despite being twice as old as anyone else at the group interview. "On the way out, all three of the interviewers singled me out and said, 'We'll be in touch,'" he said. "I never heard back."

Recruiters say people with more than three years of work experience need not apply. Ads call for "digital natives", as if playing video games as a kid is proof of competence.

Resumes go unread, as Ms Christina Economos, a science educator with more than 40 years of experience developing curriculum, has learnt. "I don't even get a reply - or they just say, 'We've found someone more suited'," she said. "I feel that my experience, skill set, work ethic are being dismissed just because of my age. It's really a blow, since I still feel like a vital human being."

A 2016 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found "robust" evidence that age discrimination in the workplace starts earlier for women and never relents. The pay gap kicks in early, at age 32, when women start getting passed over for promotion.

Discouraged and diminished, many older Americans stop looking for work. They become economically dependent, contributing to the misperception that older people are a burden to society, but it's not by choice. How are older people supposed to remain self-sufficient if they're forced out of the job market?

AGE-OLD BIAS

Not one negative stereotype about older workers holds up under scrutiny. Abundant data shows they are reliable, handle stress well, master new skills and are the most engaged of all workers when offered the chance to grow and advance on the job. Older people might take longer to accomplish a given task, but they make fewer mistakes. They take longer to recover from injury but hurt themselves less often. It's a wash. Motivation and effort affect output far more than age does.

Age prejudice - assuming that someone is too old or too young to handle a task or take on a responsibility - cramps prospects for everyone, old or young.

Millennials, who are criticised for having "no work ethic" and "needing to have their hands held", have trouble getting a foothold in the job market. Unless we tackle age bias, they too are likely to become less employable through no fault of their own, and sooner than they might think. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act kicks in at 40.

The myth that older workers crowd out younger ones is called the "lump of labour" fallacy, and economists have debunked it countless times. When jobs are scarce, this is true in the narrowest sense, but that's a labour market problem, not a too-many-old- people problem.

A 2012 Pew Charitable Trusts study of employment rates over the past 40 years found rates for younger and older workers to be positively correlated. In other words, as more older workers stayed on the job, the employment rate and number of hours worked also improved for younger people.

Progressive companies know the benefits of workplace diversity. A friend in workforce policy calls this the "shoe test": Look under the table, and if everyone is wearing the same kind of shoes, whether wingtips or flip-flops, you've got a problem. It's blindingly obvious that age belongs alongside race, gender, ability and sexual orientation as a criterion for diversity - not only because it's the ethical path but also because age discrimination hurts productivity and profits.

Being part of a mixed-age team can be challenging. Ms Betsy Martens was 55 when she landed a job as an information architect at a start-up during the heady days of the tech boom. Decades older than most of the staff, she found it invigorating. "When it came time to talk about the music we loved, the books we'd read, the movies we saw and the life experiences we'd had, we were on different planets, but we were all open-minded enough to find these differences intriguing," she told me. Things shifted during an argument with her boss. "When he said exasperatedly, 'You sound just like my mother.' That was the moment the pin pricked the balloon."

"Culture fit" gets bandied about in this context - the idea that people in an organisation should share attitudes, backgrounds and working styles. That can mean rejecting people who "aren't like us". Age, however, is a far less reliable indicator of shared values or interests than class, gender, race or income level. Discomfort at reaching across an age gap is one of the sorry consequences of living in a profoundly age-segregated society.

Cornell gerontologist Karl Pillemer says that Americans are more likely to have a friend of a different race than one who is 10 years older or younger than they are. Age segregation impoverishes us, because it cuts us off from most of humanity and because the exchange of skills and stories across generations is the natural order of things. In the United States, ageism has subverted it.

What is achieving age diversity going to take? Nothing less than a mass movement like the women's movement, which made people aware that "personal problems" - like being perceived as incompetent, or being paid less, or getting passed over for promotion - were actually widely shared political problems that required collective action.

The critical starting point is to acknowledge our own prejudice: internalised bias like "I'm too old for that job", and that directed at others, like "It's going to take me forever to bring that old guy up to speed".

Confronting ageism means making friends of all ages. It means pointing out bias when you encounter it (when everyone at a meeting is the same age, for example). Confronting ageism means joining forces. It means seeing older people not as alien and "other", but as us - future us, that is.

NEW YORK TIMES

Ashton Applewhite is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism.

Workers turning 65 before next July worried
Some fear they may be asked to go before new age ceiling of 67 for re-employment kicks in
By Olivia Ho, The Straits Times, 12 Sep 2016

Aircraft technician Sumoo Subbiramaniam turns 65 on Saturday, but his birthday will be soured by what he sees as inevitable: SIA Engineering, his only employer for 44 years, may ask him to go.

The timing of his birth prevents him from working for another two years, because the law that raises the re-employment age ceiling from 65 to 67 kicks in only on July 1 next year.

SIA Engineering, when contacted, said it has been offering re-employment to 65-year-olds but "on a case-by-case basis and subject to eligibility criteria". It declined to elaborate or say what proportion of its staff received the offer.

More companies, however, are offering their staff re-employment after the age of 65, said the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) last month.

The proportion has gone up from 42 per cent of unionised companies last year to 73 per cent this year.

Official figures also show that the percentage of people aged 65 to 69 still working here has jumped in 10 years, from just 24 per cent in 2006 to more than 40 per cent last year.

Mr Subbiramaniam, who repairs aircraft engines, said he wants to work till he is 67 years old because his two sons, aged 18 and 24, have yet to finish their tertiary education.

Looking somewhat forlorn, he added: "I spent my whole life with this company. I'd feel so proud when I see its planes in the air. It brought me this far. Now without it, I feel lost."

He has sought help from the Singapore Airlines Staff Union, which has appealed to his company.

Others in the same boat are also turning to their unions. Singapore Industrial and Services Employees' Union general treasurer Philip Lee said, in the last few months, he has met three or four worried workers who will turn 65 before next July.

There could be more but they may prefer to stay silent, he added.

MPs and human resource experts are worried that some companies are ill prepared for the new re-employment law.

NTUC deputy secretary-general Heng Chee How criticised employers who are exploiting the 10 months before the new law kicks in, to retire healthy 65-year-olds.

Such an attitude"will only dampen their own capability and demoralise their other employees", said Mr Heng, who is also an MP for Jalan Besar GRC. "That would not be smart for business."

Mr David Ang, director of corporate services at Human Capital Singapore, said the economic slowdown, especially the oil crisis, is putting a strain on companies.

"When it comes to restructuring, older workers, who need a higher level of medical coverage, are the first to go," he added.

Most vulnerable are blue-collar workers because of the physically demanding work they do, said Singapore Human Resources Institute president Erman Tan.