Mature workers news round up – November 2021

Menopause-related employment tribunal claims on the rise (UK)

The number of tribunal cases in which employees are alleging menopause-related discrimination is on the rise, prompting a law firm to call for more awareness and support for staff experiencing it.  – Personnel Today 30 November 2021

UK energy industry grapples with ageing workforce and the shift to renewables

An ageing workforce represents the greatest challenge to the energy industry in the UK according to new research from leading global energy recruitment specialists Oilandgasjobsearch.com and Brunel. Forty-six per cent of responses – which included companies and recruiters as well as workers – identified skills shortages resulting from an ageing workforce as the biggest issue facing the industry.  – Lancashire Business Review 30 November 2021

Will early retirees return to work during the labor shortage? (USA)

The ongoing worker shortage is still frustrating employers. One big factor behind the lack of applicants for posted positions is the dramatic jump in retirements during the pandemic. A critical labor market question is whether these retirees will return to the job market, and, if they do, will employers welcome them?  – Marketplace 29 November 2021

‘Nothing short of extraordinary’: How the pandemic changed our population

“What’s really concerning is that the composition of the population’s age structure has become more problematic during the pandemic. Prior to COVID we were struggling with an age structure that meant we had insufficient people for our workforce needs, and that’s even more pronounced now. That’s going to put pressure on the nation in the post-pandemic recovery phase.”  – WA Today 27 November 2021

China extends maternity leave to boost birth rate

Several regions in China have extended maternity leave, in the latest attempt to encourage child-rearing as the country faces a demographic crisis fuelled by a record-low birth rate. Beijing’s city government announced that women can now take 158 days of maternity leave, a bump up of 30 days. Shanghai authorities announced similar changes beginning a day earlier.  – Channel News Asia 26 November 2021

We need to better prepare for an aging America

A recent jobs report showed that the unemployment rate dropped significantly to 4.8 percent during the past 18 months. That is good news for many Americans. But a new reality has also become apparent — an unmet need for care workers.  – The Hill 24 November 2021

After losing her mother, this grandmother retrained in aged care and went back to work at 74

Starting fresh is a familiar process for grandmother Leonora Brown. The single mother of three has multiple degrees, has worked in at least three different industries, and suffered the loss of a parent after years of being their carer. So when she was left with the realisation, in her early 70s, that she would need to get herself a job, Ms Brown knew she would have to find a way.  – ABC News 24 November 2021

Firms facing mass exodus of older workers post-pandemic, report warns (UK)

The end of the furlough scheme has not led to mass unemployment, but firms are now facing a narrower workforce with older employees leaving the labour market, a report has warned.

The research, conducted for Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE), found that the number of 55- to 64-year-olds either in employment or seeking employment had dipped by 1.2 percentage points (from 68.5 to 67.4) between mid-2019 to summer 2021.  – People Management 23 November 2021

Sue Yeandle: How can employers support staff with caring responsibilities? 

It’s a growing issue. In 2020, England and Wales had 3.7 million working carers according to the Supporting working carers: how employers and employees can benefit report, published in June 2020 by the University of Sheffield and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).  – Employee Benefits 22 November 2021

Repeatedly asking employee when they’ll retire is age discrimination, court says (USA)

If an employee mentions retirement, there’s nothing wrong with inquiring about their plans. But when an employer continually pesters an older employee about when they’re going to retire, that can be age discrimination. Here’s what a court said about a recent lawsuit on the matter.  – HR Morning 22 November 2021

Why Older Americans Are Fleeing the Workforce

Compared with pre-pandemic estimates, hundreds of thousands more Americans have retired in the last 18 months. We hear from two recent retirees, and we talk to WSJ’s Amara Omeokwe about what the wave of retirement could mean for the economy.  – Wall Street Journal 21 November 2021

Ageing Tasmanian tradies getting back on the tools to address labour shortages in the construction sector (audio)

As Master Builders Tasmania Executive Director Matthew Pollock explains, the sector needs 6,500 skilled workers to grow the workforce and replace skilled workers over the next four years. How will the building boom continue when they decide it’s time to finally retire?

Duration: 11min 43sec

Broadcast: 19 November 2021, 8:30am

Download 5.36 MB

ABC Hobart

Ageing workforce in non-science fields ‘not good news’ for UK

Some social science and humanities fields could be missing out on key perspectives because of ageing academic workforces, with a lack of funding potentially preventing younger scholars joining disciplines such as education, it has been warned. While some disciplines naturally have older researchers, more job security is needed to attract young, experts say.  – Times Higher Education 19 November 2021

How to make workplace tech inclusive for an ageing workforce (UK)

While experienced workers don’t need tech handholding, your business can yet streamline its IT to render it more accessible. We have to be careful not to assume all older workers simply need more tech hand-holding than younger workers. Most certainly don’t. The majority of experts, however, agree that if you want an age-diverse workforce, with all the benefits it brings, you have to provide them with digital interfaces that help them perform their jobs, rather than oversaturating them with devices and software that get in the way.  – IT Pro 19 November 2021

When is compulsory retirement justified? (UK)

It can be discriminatory to require an employee to retire when they reach a certain age, unless a retirement policy has a legitimate and fair aim. Andrew Sugarman looks at what the tribunals have found in the recent cases challenging Oxford University’s ‘Employer Justified Retirement Age’.  – Personnel Today 18 November 2021

Time Running Out for South Korea to End Age Discrimination

The window is rapidly closing for South Korea’s National Assembly to pass a comprehensive antidiscrimination law that citizens and human rights organizations have long endorsed.

A comprehensive antidiscrimination law has the potential to address pervasive discrimination in South Korea, including against older people, 40 percent of whom live in poverty, the highest rate in all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Many Korean older people say they have difficulty finding jobs because of age restrictions, 59 percent in a 2018 survey by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. For those who can get jobs, the same survey found 44 percent said they experienced ageism in their workplaces.  – Human Rights Watch 19 November 2021

Age discrimination laws fail to protect older staff (UK)

The decade-long trend for more older workers to be in employment came to an abrupt halt after the coronavirus pandemic took hold, with employees over 50 disproportionately likely to be furloughed or made redundant. In the UK, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, said last year that only a third of workers over 50 who had lost jobs during the pandemic had found a new one within six months.  – Financial Times 17 November 2021

You must work longer, but corporate reality doesn’t match the policy

While you may have to work longer, new data shows it is becoming harder to find or maintain work as you age, with discrimination rising in the workplace.  – The Sydney Morning Herald 16 November 2021

Addressing Gendered Ageism: A better retirement for all women

At the intersection of age and gender, what needs to be done to ensure that women have decent lives going into and throughout their retirement?  – OECD 23 September 2021

How Older Workers Can Combat Ageism While Job Hunting (USA)

Even as older Americans make up a larger percentage of the workforce, many find themselves facing age discrimination in their attempts to find a new job. The WSJ’s Ray A. Smith and the Urban Institute’s Richard Johnson discuss some of the challenges older workers face while job hunting, and ways to overcome them.  – Wall St Journal 14 November 2021

10 Career Moves to Make in Your 50s

There are some things you can do to keep yourself marketable and accelerate your career as you get closer to preparing for retirement — whatever that looks like for you. Try these 10 moves.  – AARP 10 September 2021

Bambi started a business at age 50. In Australia, she’s far from alone

Over-50s are the nation’s fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs, with one-third of new businesses founded by mature-aged Australians, according to research published in the Australian Journal of Career Development this year.

Research author, La Trobe University entrepreneurship Professor Alex Maritz, said seniorpreneurs are more likely to be successful than their younger counterparts, largely due to their wealth of knowledge and skills.  – The New Daily 14 November 2021

Working longer in old age for survival (Malaysia)

Meena, a 55-year-old accountant, is already looking forward to her retirement. With health issues such as backpain and arthritis, work has become physically challenging.

The only reason that keeps her working are the loans she pays on her house and car.

By the age of 60, Meena expects to retire with adequate retirement savings, a luxury 97% of working Malaysians covered under the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) cannot afford.  – The Star 13 November 2021

The New World Of Work: Pros And Cons For Older Workers

When you put together a cadre of experts on aging, ageism and the future of work for free-ranging conversations on those hot-button issues, the atmosphere begins to crackle and spark. Possibilities and hope emerge.

That’s what happened at Age@Work: The New Revolution, two provocative events I was fortunate to be part of. They were co-hosted by Next For Me (a media company reporting on a generation reinventing work) and amazing community (a global non-profit expanding the work horizon for women over 45).

We talked about everything from remote work to entrepreneurship to career transitions to lifelong learning to big-picture demographic shifts.  – Forbes 12 November 2021

Older workers in NSW allege discrimination after denied workers compensation

Older workers in NSW say they’re being discriminated against as they’re offered less compensation than their younger colleagues if they’re injured on the job.  — ABC News 10 November 2021

Age discrimination an obstacle for keen older workers (audio)

Ninety-eight per cent of older people in Victoria think the older they get, the harder it is to find a job, according to a recent survey. Many people feel they are overlooked by employers because of their age. However some older Victorians are successfully finding work as entrepreneurs, are retraining, or are coming out of retirement to help during COVID.  – ABC Melbourne The Conversation Hour  10 November 2021 (Download 23.70 MB)

Mature workers are an untapped talent pool: new study

Macquarie University research has found that older workers remain an important source of knowledge and expertise for organisations, dispelling the myth that the over 55s are no longer of any use in the workforce.  – The Lighthouse 8 November 2021

Labour shortage? The answer is to bring older adults back into the workforce

Headlines about the “big quit” and the “great resignation” have dominated the news recently. Unquestionably, the labour shortage is real for both lower-skilled jobs and knowledge workers. Regrettably, employers continue to overlook one of Canada’s growing and sustainable resources, its aging demographic. Businesses fail to take advantage of the fastest growing segment of the population — people over age 55 who are talented, capable and interested in work, yet who are ignored due to unconscious age bias.  – Toronto Star 7 November 2021

As China ages even the internet is getting old as Tencent prepares retirement packages for its employees

Employees retiring at the statutory age will receive tailor-made souvenirs, long service gratuities amounting to six months salary, and a retirement bonus. Tencent’s retirement move is a novel development in the industry, with many young tech companies yet to devise detailed retirement packages for employees.  – South China Morning Post 5 November 2021

US House votes to protect older job applicants from discrimination

A bill that that would better protect older Americans from age discrimination in the hiring process passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 4 by a vote of 224 to 200.

The Protect Older Job Applicants Act would amend the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to specifically prohibit employers from limiting, segregating or classifying job applicants based on their ages. In recent years, court decisions have weakened the protections the ADEA provides, with some rulings asserting that the law does not explicitly protect job applicants.  – AARP 4 November 2021

Older workers ‘pushed out’ of the workforce after redundancy, study finds

Redundancy has pushed more than one in 10 older workers out of the workforce, a study has revealed, with 11 per cent of over-50s who have been made redundant in the last five years subsequently disappearing from the jobs market.

The Working Late report by Legal & General Retail Retirement and the Centre for Economics and Business Research has found that among the 177,000 over-50s made redundant annually since 2018, 20,000 are estimated to have left the workforce.

The research also found that higher-than-average redundancy rates were far more common among older workers, with over-50s 17 per cent more likely to face redundancy than younger workers.  – Personnel Management 3 November 2021

Workers over 50 being ‘singled out for the sack’ (UK)

As many as 177,000 older workers are being made redundant each year – with 20,000 never returning to the workplace.

Overall, 11 percent of employees aged 50-plus have disappeared permanently from the workforce in the past five years, according to research. And nearly two thirds (62 percent) say their age meant they were singled out by bosses for the sack. The findings have serious consequences for retirement savings. Those losing their jobs save £29,000 less into their pension pot, according to the Working Late study by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research. – The Express 3 November 2021

15 years of age discrimination laws: Are they working? (UK)

Fifteen years after the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 came into force, Sarah Evans examines why the law, since suberseded by the Equality Act, is rarely the subject of employment tribunal claims and whether employers are doing enough to stop age discrimination in the workplace.  – Personnel Today 3 November 2021 (paywall)

How To Combat Reverse Ageism At Work

A recent American Psychological Association study revealed that younger adults (ages 15-29) currently experience more age discrimination than older individuals. This form of discrimination, known as “reverse ageism,” is not accounted for in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, which applies only to workers age 40 and up.  – Forbes 2 November 2021

Many Older Workers Trapped in Long-Term Unemployment

Job loss isn’t easy for anyone, but older workers face particular challenges getting back to work. In September, more than 1.3 million workers age 55 and older were unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among job seekers in that age group, roughly half have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, which puts them in the category of the long-term unemployed.

Even though many employers are eager to hire, many of the openings may no longer fit the needs of the people who are looking for work, especially older adults who have had to balance health, family and retirement concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.  – AARP 2 November 2021

‘Nothing short of extraordinary’: How the pandemic changed our population

“What’s really concerning is that the composition of the population’s age structure has become more problematic during the pandemic. Prior to COVID we were struggling with an age structure that meant we had insufficient people for our workforce needs, and that’s even more pronounced now. That’s going to put pressure on the nation in the post-pandemic recovery phase.”  – WA Today 27 November 2021

China extends maternity leave to boost birth rate

Several regions in China have extended maternity leave, in the latest attempt to encourage child-rearing as the country faces a demographic crisis fuelled by a record-low birth rate. Beijing’s city government announced that women can now take 158 days of maternity leave, a bump up of 30 days. Shanghai authorities announced similar changes beginning a day earlier.  – Channel News Asia 26 November 2021

We need to better prepare for an aging America

A recent jobs report showed that the unemployment rate dropped significantly to 4.8 percent during the past 18 months. That is good news for many Americans. But a new reality has also become apparent — an unmet need for care workers.  – The Hill 24 November 2021

After losing her mother, this grandmother retrained in aged care and went back to work at 74

Starting fresh is a familiar process for grandmother Leonora Brown. The single mother of three has multiple degrees, has worked in at least three different industries, and suffered the loss of a parent after years of being their carer. So when she was left with the realisation, in her early 70s, that she would need to get herself a job, Ms Brown knew she would have to find a way.  – ABC News 24 November 2021

Firms facing mass exodus of older workers post-pandemic, report warns (UK)

The end of the furlough scheme has not led to mass unemployment, but firms are now facing a narrower workforce with older employees leaving the labour market, a report has warned.

The research, conducted for Resolution Foundation and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE), found that the number of 55- to 64-year-olds either in employment or seeking employment had dipped by 1.2 percentage points (from 68.5 to 67.4) between mid-2019 to summer 2021.  – People Management 23 November 2021

Sue Yeandle: How can employers support staff with caring responsibilities? 

It’s a growing issue. In 2020, England and Wales had 3.7 million working carers according to the Supporting working carers: how employers and employees can benefit report, published in June 2020 by the University of Sheffield and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).  – Employee Benefits 22 November 2021

Repeatedly asking employee when they’ll retire is age discrimination, court says (USA)

If an employee mentions retirement, there’s nothing wrong with inquiring about their plans. But when an employer continually pesters an older employee about when they’re going to retire, that can be age discrimination. Here’s what a court said about a recent lawsuit on the matter.  – HR Morning 22 November 2021

Why Older Americans Are Fleeing the Workforce

Compared with pre-pandemic estimates, hundreds of thousands more Americans have retired in the last 18 months. We hear from two recent retirees, and we talk to WSJ’s Amara Omeokwe about what the wave of retirement could mean for the economy.  – Wall Street Journal 21 November 2021

Ageing Tasmanian tradies getting back on the tools to address labour shortages in the construction sector (audio)

As Master Builders Tasmania Executive Director Matthew Pollock explains, the sector needs 6,500 skilled workers to grow the workforce and replace skilled workers over the next four years. How will the building boom continue when they decide it’s time to finally retire?

Duration: 11min 43sec

Broadcast: 19 November 2021, 8:30am

Download 5.36 MB

ABC Hobart

Ageing workforce in non-science fields ‘not good news’ for UK

Some social science and humanities fields could be missing out on key perspectives because of ageing academic workforces, with a lack of funding potentially preventing younger scholars joining disciplines such as education, it has been warned. While some disciplines naturally have older researchers, more job security is needed to attract young, experts say.  – Times Higher Education 19 November 2021

How to make workplace tech inclusive for an ageing workforce (UK)

While experienced workers don’t need tech handholding, your business can yet streamline its IT to render it more accessible. We have to be careful not to assume all older workers simply need more tech hand-holding than younger workers. Most certainly don’t. The majority of experts, however, agree that if you want an age-diverse workforce, with all the benefits it brings, you have to provide them with digital interfaces that help them perform their jobs, rather than oversaturating them with devices and software that get in the way.  – IT Pro 19 November 2021

When is compulsory retirement justified? (UK)

It can be discriminatory to require an employee to retire when they reach a certain age, unless a retirement policy has a legitimate and fair aim. Andrew Sugarman looks at what the tribunals have found in the recent cases challenging Oxford University’s ‘Employer Justified Retirement Age’.  – Personnel Today 18 November 2021

Time Running Out for South Korea to End Age Discrimination

The window is rapidly closing for South Korea’s National Assembly to pass a comprehensive antidiscrimination law that citizens and human rights organizations have long endorsed.

A comprehensive antidiscrimination law has the potential to address pervasive discrimination in South Korea, including against older people, 40 percent of whom live in poverty, the highest rate in all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Many Korean older people say they have difficulty finding jobs because of age restrictions, 59 percent in a 2018 survey by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. For those who can get jobs, the same survey found 44 percent said they experienced ageism in their workplaces.  – Human Rights Watch 19 November 2021

Age discrimination laws fail to protect older staff (UK)

The decade-long trend for more older workers to be in employment came to an abrupt halt after the coronavirus pandemic took hold, with employees over 50 disproportionately likely to be furloughed or made redundant. In the UK, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, said last year that only a third of workers over 50 who had lost jobs during the pandemic had found a new one within six months.  – Financial Times 17 November 2021

You must work longer, but corporate reality doesn’t match the policy

While you may have to work longer, new data shows it is becoming harder to find or maintain work as you age, with discrimination rising in the workplace.  – The Sydney Morning Herald 16 November 2021

Addressing Gendered Ageism: A better retirement for all women

At the intersection of age and gender, what needs to be done to ensure that women have decent lives going into and throughout their retirement?  – OECD 23 September 2021

How Older Workers Can Combat Ageism While Job Hunting (USA)

Even as older Americans make up a larger percentage of the workforce, many find themselves facing age discrimination in their attempts to find a new job. The WSJ’s Ray A. Smith and the Urban Institute’s Richard Johnson discuss some of the challenges older workers face while job hunting, and ways to overcome them.  – Wall St Journal 14 November 2021

10 Career Moves to Make in Your 50s

There are some things you can do to keep yourself marketable and accelerate your career as you get closer to preparing for retirement — whatever that looks like for you. Try these 10 moves.  – AARP 10 September 2021

Bambi started a business at age 50. In Australia, she’s far from alone

Over-50s are the nation’s fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs, with one-third of new businesses founded by mature-aged Australians, according to research published in the Australian Journal of Career Development this year.

Research author, La Trobe University entrepreneurship Professor Alex Maritz, said seniorpreneurs are more likely to be successful than their younger counterparts, largely due to their wealth of knowledge and skills.  – The New Daily 14 November 2021

Working longer in old age for survival (Malaysia)

Meena, a 55-year-old accountant, is already looking forward to her retirement. With health issues such as backpain and arthritis, work has become physically challenging.

The only reason that keeps her working are the loans she pays on her house and car.

By the age of 60, Meena expects to retire with adequate retirement savings, a luxury 97% of working Malaysians covered under the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) cannot afford.  – The Star 13 November 2021

The New World Of Work: Pros And Cons For Older Workers

When you put together a cadre of experts on aging, ageism and the future of work for free-ranging conversations on those hot-button issues, the atmosphere begins to crackle and spark. Possibilities and hope emerge.

That’s what happened at Age@Work: The New Revolution, two provocative events I was fortunate to be part of. They were co-hosted by Next For Me (a media company reporting on a generation reinventing work) and amazing community (a global non-profit expanding the work horizon for women over 45).

We talked about everything from remote work to entrepreneurship to career transitions to lifelong learning to big-picture demographic shifts.  – Forbes 12 November 2021

Older workers in NSW allege discrimination after denied workers compensation

Older workers in NSW say they’re being discriminated against as they’re offered less compensation than their younger colleagues if they’re injured on the job.  — ABC News 10 November 2021

Age discrimination an obstacle for keen older workers (audio)

Ninety-eight per cent of older people in Victoria think the older they get, the harder it is to find a job, according to a recent survey. Many people feel they are overlooked by employers because of their age. However some older Victorians are successfully finding work as entrepreneurs, are retraining, or are coming out of retirement to help during COVID.  – ABC Melbourne The Conversation Hour  10 November 2021 (Download 23.70 MB)

Mature workers are an untapped talent pool: new study

Macquarie University research has found that older workers remain an important source of knowledge and expertise for organisations, dispelling the myth that the over 55s are no longer of any use in the workforce.  – The Lighthouse 8 November 2021

Labour shortage? The answer is to bring older adults back into the workforce

Headlines about the “big quit” and the “great resignation” have dominated the news recently. Unquestionably, the labour shortage is real for both lower-skilled jobs and knowledge workers. Regrettably, employers continue to overlook one of Canada’s growing and sustainable resources, its aging demographic. Businesses fail to take advantage of the fastest growing segment of the population — people over age 55 who are talented, capable and interested in work, yet who are ignored due to unconscious age bias.  – Toronto Star 7 November 2021

As China ages even the internet is getting old as Tencent prepares retirement packages for its employees

Employees retiring at the statutory age will receive tailor-made souvenirs, long service gratuities amounting to six months salary, and a retirement bonus. Tencent’s retirement move is a novel development in the industry, with many young tech companies yet to devise detailed retirement packages for employees.  – South China Morning Post 5 November 2021

US House votes to protect older job applicants from discrimination

A bill that that would better protect older Americans from age discrimination in the hiring process passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 4 by a vote of 224 to 200.

The Protect Older Job Applicants Act would amend the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to specifically prohibit employers from limiting, segregating or classifying job applicants based on their ages. In recent years, court decisions have weakened the protections the ADEA provides, with some rulings asserting that the law does not explicitly protect job applicants.  – AARP 4 November 2021

Older workers ‘pushed out’ of the workforce after redundancy, study finds

Redundancy has pushed more than one in 10 older workers out of the workforce, a study has revealed, with 11 per cent of over-50s who have been made redundant in the last five years subsequently disappearing from the jobs market.

The Working Late report by Legal & General Retail Retirement and the Centre for Economics and Business Research has found that among the 177,000 over-50s made redundant annually since 2018, 20,000 are estimated to have left the workforce.

The research also found that higher-than-average redundancy rates were far more common among older workers, with over-50s 17 per cent more likely to face redundancy than younger workers.  – Personnel Management 3 November 2021

Workers over 50 being ‘singled out for the sack’ (UK)

As many as 177,000 older workers are being made redundant each year – with 20,000 never returning to the workplace.

Overall, 11 percent of employees aged 50-plus have disappeared permanently from the workforce in the past five years, according to research. And nearly two thirds (62 percent) say their age meant they were singled out by bosses for the sack. The findings have serious consequences for retirement savings. Those losing their jobs save £29,000 less into their pension pot, according to the Working Late study by Legal & General and the Centre for Economics and Business Research. – The Express 3 November 2021

15 years of age discrimination laws: Are they working? (UK)

Fifteen years after the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 came into force, Sarah Evans examines why the law, since suberseded by the Equality Act, is rarely the subject of employment tribunal claims and whether employers are doing enough to stop age discrimination in the workplace.  – Personnel Today 3 November 2021 (paywall)

How To Combat Reverse Ageism At Work

A recent American Psychological Association study revealed that younger adults (ages 15-29) currently experience more age discrimination than older individuals. This form of discrimination, known as “reverse ageism,” is not accounted for in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, which applies only to workers age 40 and up.  – Forbes 2 November 2021

Many Older Workers Trapped in Long-Term Unemployment

Job loss isn’t easy for anyone, but older workers face particular challenges getting back to work. In September, more than 1.3 million workers age 55 and older were unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among job seekers in that age group, roughly half have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, which puts them in the category of the long-term unemployed.

Even though many employers are eager to hire, many of the openings may no longer fit the needs of the people who are looking for work, especially older adults who have had to balance health, family and retirement concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.  – AARP 2 November 2021