It’s not like relatively mature American employees are unaware that a discriminatory hurdle exists in work venues across the country.
After all, they comprise the most seasoned U.S. work demographic. Collectively, they are intuitive to a heightened degree when it comes to evaluating evenhandedness and fair play in job positions.
And there are lots of them. Reportedly, about 25% of the national workforce is at least 55 years of age. And, as noted by a recent in-depth national article on age discrimination in American workplaces, “That cohort is expected to increase to a third of the workforce in the next decade.”
Any reader pondering that numerical data might reasonably think that employers would broadly protect the country’s older work pool rather than throw up obstacles for seasoned and proven performers.
Yet that is not the case. In fact, diverse and reliable data flatly point to discrimination and reprisals targeting legions of older workers. One workforce analyst and consultant pointedly notes that, “Once an employee gets beyond the median age of the employee population, everything goes negative for them.”
To the extent that proves true, it underscores sheer illogical for key company decision makers who purposely seek to shed their enterprises of older workers. An employee with extensive work experience who is unwillingly terminated does not walk alone out the exit door; decades of invaluable acumen often also departs the premises.
The above-cited topical overview underscores the hopes of many that greater emphasis will now fall during the Biden presidential administration on spotlighting workplace discrimination based on age and on preventing it.
Time will tell, of course. The issue seems firmly destined for continued front-burner attention and reiteration of the great value that older American workers provide in the workplace.