Window To Wall Street®

Until now, much of the attention in this recession has been focused on the group of older workers who will toil for more years than they expected because stock market losses have put a severe dent in their retirement nest egg.

Now, new research suggests that a larger group of workers ages 62 to 69 could find themselves with a thornier problem: No job, no prospect for finding another, and forced to retire earlier than they, or their finances, were prepared for.

“Those people, the risk that they’re subject to is not the stock market, it’s the labor market,” said Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College and co-author of a recent paper looking at that phenomenon.

Already, there are signs some older workers are falling into that trap.

Mark Hinkle, a spokesman with the Social Security Administration, said applications for retirement benefits for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2009, rose 22 percent over the 2008 fiscal year, to 2.57 million. That’s much higher than the 15 percent increase that had been projected because of the increase in people hitting retirement age. Hinkle said the discrepancy can be attributed to the impact of the weak economy. 

Based on historical trends, Levine predicts that the group of people who are forced out of the labor market because of the recession will be about 50 percent larger than the group who elects to stay in their jobs longer because of the stock market crash.

Being forced to retire earlier than you want to can have serious economic repercussions. In addition to losing your full income and benefits earlier, a person who must start collecting Social Security at age 62 instead of age 65 could see around a 20 percent drop in their monthly benefit, Levine said.

A survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 42 percent of workers believe they will need to accumulate about $500,000 in retirement savings to live comfortably in retirement. Yet only 26 percent of workers over age 55 had saved more than $250,000 toward their retirement, the survey found.

NEARING AGE 50 OR RETIREMENT? WATCH OUT FOR AGE DISCRIMINATION COLUMBUS , Ohio – The threat of age discrimination against American workers seems to peak about age 50 and then again when workers near retirement age, according to a new study of validated discrimination claims.The first spike of age discrimination claims seems to hit just when workers are entering their prime earning years and their salaries are increasing the most, said Vincent Roscigno, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

 

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/agediscrim.htm

Does Your Diversity Program Include Workers Over 50?

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The ADEA's protections apply to both employees and job applicants. Under the ADEA, it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because of his/her age with respect to any term, condition, or privilege of employment, including hiring, firing, promotion, layoff, compensation, benefits, job assignments, and training.

 

In Fiscal Year 2006, EEOC received 16,548 charges of age discrimination. EEOC resolved 14,146 age discrimination charges in FY 2006 and recovered $51.5 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).

The USA has made little progress in this area that impacts all developed nations. The United Kindom seems to have made the most progress in facing the realities and passing new regulations with their; 2006 Age Equality and Diversity Regulations.

In the article Age discrimination: the battle begins, the author states, “Laws against discrimination on grounds of sex or race have been with us for 30 years, yet the most widespread discrimination of all, that of age – particularly against older people – has carried on unchecked. Until now.”


http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/discrimination/age-discrimination/index.html

http://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/lifechanges/getajob/AgeDiscriminationTheBattleBegins.asp

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The APA uses statistical sampling to insure reasonable equality between genders and marital status during the interview and hiring process for college professors.

 

Most interesting was the fact that the Age of applicants was the most important discriminate variable (not gender or minority status). Bottom line: people over 50 were unable to obtain job interviews while the younger people under age 30 obtained an average of 3 interviews.

 

Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups

2002-2003 Placement Report Division of Professional Matters of the American Philological Association (APA)

 

The CSWMG is mandated by the APA to monitor actively both the fairness of the employment process and hiring institutions’ compliance with professional ethical standards within American member Universities. In this capacity, the CSWMG produces an annual report on the previous year’s job placements.
When analyzing the data concerning interviews and hires, it is important to keep in mind the broad outlines of demographic breakdowns above. Since, for example, women made up roughly 40% of the candidates, as well as 37% of the candidates attending the meetings, we would expect them to obtain roughly 40% of the available interviews and jobs.

Last year’s report raised the point that age discrimination appears to be a problem at the interview stage, and this year’s figures support such a conclusion. Candidates under the age of thirty averaged 3.3 interviews, and those aged 30-39 averaged 3.0. By contrast, candidates aged 40-49 averaged 1.1, and those aged 50-59 averaged only 0.1.

While some of this sharp drop can be explained by the fact that candidates tend to apply for fewer jobs as they advance in age, that is not the sole cause. Those candidates over the age of 40 who applied for more than 20 positions averaged far fewer interviews than their younger counterparts, as did those who applied for more than 10 positions. The committee study concluded, “It appears that institutions are hesitant to interview candidates over the age of 40.”

 

It appears? How could it be any clearer, when rarely was a qualified canidate over 50 even interviewed!

http://www.apaclassics.org/profmat/cswmg_placement2003.html

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Court Broadens Scope of Age-Discrimination Protections
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Article Excerpts Published: March 30, 2005 The New York Times

Workers who sue their employers for age discrimination need not prove that the discrimination was intentional, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
Adopting a pro-worker interpretation of the federal law that prohibits age discrimination in employment, the 5-to-3 decision held that employees can prevail by showing that a policy has a discriminatory impact on older workers, regardless of the employer’s motivation.

The decision removed the requirement, imposed by a number of lower federal courts, that employees produce the equivalent of a smoking gun in order to win an age discrimination suit. Since discrimination on the job is often subtle, and proof of motivation often elusive, the need to demonstrate intentional discrimination has led to the dismissal of many lawsuits before trial.

But the Supreme Court’s decision, in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, did not leave employers defenseless. They will be able to defend themselves by proving that a challenged policy was based on “reasonable factors other than age.”

In fact, the court accepted that defense in the case at hand, a lawsuit brought by a group of older police officers in Jackson, Miss., who challenged the city’s decision to give proportionately more generous raises to officers with less than five years on the force, most of whom were younger.

In another case involving age discrimination in the workplace, a federal district judge on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that would have allowed employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they reach age 65. 
 

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