For Middle-Aged Who Lose Jobs, Labor Market Is Tough : Employment: Age discrimination is against the law, but those older than 50 might find this of little help as employers seek less expensive workers.
Don’t tell Betty Deal age discrimination is illegal.
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She’s well aware of the laws protecting older employees in the work place, but she also knows what it’s like to be middle-aged and suddenly thrust into a fiercely competitive labor market after a corporate downsizing.
“When you go in and talk to [job interviewers], they ask you, ‘How long do you think you’ll be with us?’ or ‘Are you going to retire?’
“Then they’ll say something like, ‘We were looking for someone with a little less experience.’ What they really meant to say is they want someone younger,” said Deal, 56, of San Jose, Calif., who lost her $60,000-a-year management job with a Silicon Valley electronics firm four years ago.
She has yet to find permanent, full-time work.
Stable jobs are becoming even scarcer nationwide as mega-mergers in the banking and entertainment industries and corporate restructurings among behemoths like AT&T;, Colgate-Palmolive and Merck bring about thousands of layoffs.
All ages are at risk. However, unemployment for the 50-plus crowd, many of whom are in the twilight years of their careers and at peak earnings, poses special problems in a decade of corporate cost-trimming and downsizing.
Some senior workers will be offered early retirement, but even those receiving benefits may still need to keep working to make ends meet. Many career counselors have reported a recent rise in the number of older clients.
Unfortunately, “companies are more likely to hire part-timers . . . temporaries . . . or younger people with less experience,” said William S. Payson, who runs the Senior Staff Job Information Exchange in San Jose, which helps match older job seekers with available jobs. “The companies like the flexibility; it enables them to expand and contract their labor force without creating headlines.”
Jim Robinson Jr., 52, of Portland, Ore., has seen that strategy firsthand. Before being laid off in the summer of 1992, Robinson earned around $95,000 a year as a systems engineering manager for International Business Machines. While his two-page resume displays a lifetime of achievements--including 25 years of steady movement up IBM’s corporate ladder--he has yet to find a comparable position.
“I think it has to do with my salary. Most employers, I’ve discovered, do not wish to pay more than $60,000 to $70,000 for an employee. Period,” Robinson said. “There’s the six-digit money in the executive suite, but you have to have entry to the executive suite before your 45th birthday.
“They view me, I suppose, as an anomaly, someone with desirable skills but too expensive to hire.”
Job counseling experts say it often takes a bit longer for the 50-plus job seeker to find work. (Fifty percent of all workers on average find new jobs within three months, 80% within six months, they say.)
Payson says most older job seekers should also resign themselves to the fact that the salaries from their most recent position won’t be matched, at least initially, and especially if they’re changing careers. At the same time, he says, they shouldn’t rule out part-time work since that eventually could lead to a higher-paying full-time position.
“It can be a nice fit. Some companies look for older workers because they feel they’re more experienced and reliable,” Payson said.
In fact, most of the 1,000-or-so listings in his Senior Staff Job Information Exchange are for part-time work. Eighty-three percent of those jobs are filled within days, he said.
Deal, who was a customer service manager for an electronics firm, is now working part time selling insurance and securities for an investment company. While she’s earning only commission, she’s hopeful the experience will parlay into a more lucrative full-time position down the line.
“It was devastating losing your job,” Deal said. “But I’ve learned not to lose my self-confidence, not to give up looking.”
“It all has to do with attitude,” agreed Lamar Jolly, senior adviser for Bernard Haldane Associates, a Portland, Ore., job placement service, which has seen an increase in 50-plus job seekers.
“This segment of the population needs to go back to the well and look at themselves in terms of how they sold themselves in their youth. They can start by using their reserve of energy and maturity.”
Jolly recommends that older workers set themselves apart from their younger rivals by accentuating their accomplishments, such as saving a former employer money or greatly increasing productivity. If certain skills are lacking, they can enroll in courses to bring themselves up to speed, he added.
However, Jolly cautions against “aging” a resume with too many experiences and dates.
Skills and economics aside, older workers must also overcome some common myths within the work place.
“One common belief is that an older worker may be absent more often due to illness than younger workers; another might be that benefits might cost more,” said Samuel N. Ray, author of “Job Hunting After 50: Strategies for Success.”
“However . . . those things are simply not true. In many ways older workers are superior to younger workers.”
To be sure, a study released four years ago by Commonwealth Fund, a philanthropic foundation, found that most long-held beliefs about older workers were wrong. In fact, companies with programs emphasizing older workers often had lower absenteeism and employee turnover, and higher profits.
Still, age discrimination continues in many businesses despite federal laws protecting workers of ages 40 and up.
“It’s there, it’s unofficial, it’s rampant,” said Jolly, who has heard countless accounts from older clients.
The offending employer can merely claim that it couldn’t agree on salary terms or that someone else, albeit younger, had better job qualifications, he said.
“Things will only start to change as the baby boomers get older. There is strength in numbers,” he said of the post-World War II generation, the oldest of which turns 50 this year.
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BACKGROUND
* The Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967 protects workers 40 years and older from being denied a job or fired because of their age. The law, which also covers salary increases, promotions and benefits, pertains to all private employers with 15 or more workers as well as all government employees.
