Baby Boomers face workplace ageism

There is growing evidence that some Baby Boomers and other older workers are victims of age discrimination -- both when they are laid off from their jobs and when they go to look for another job.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported yesterday that age-related job discrimination complaints are at an all-time high, jumping 28.7 percent to 24,582 filed in the year that ended Sept. 30, up from 19,103 in 2007.

You must be at least 40 years old to file an age discrimination complaint.

"The EEOC has not seen an increase of this magnitude in charges filed for many years," the commission's acting chairman, Stuart J. Ishimaru, said in an Associated Press story.

"While we do not know if it signifies a trend, it is clear that employment discrimination remains a persistent problem."

And the evidence suggests it's a problem for older workers, 50 plus.

With the economy in recession and employers looking to shed expense, it's likely that older workers with the most years of experience at a particular workplace will carry the biggest salaries.

An AARP Policy & Research report from October of last year said that a survey showed 60 percent of workers 45 and older believe that age discrimination exists in the workplace, and 13 percent say they have personally experienced such discrimination in the past five years.

And if you're an older worker who gets laid off, chances are you'll have a tougher time finding a new job, especially in a tough economy of fewer jobs.

Potential employers can't ask about age and judge a hire based on that. But it doesn't take much for someone to calculate a reasonable approximation of your age if you are asked to include in an application or on your resume a year for high school and/or college graduation.

A Wall Street Journal story on the recent EEOC findings cited some research by Joanna Lahey, an economist with Texas A&M University who studies age discrimination.

Said the Journal: "In a 2005 experiment, she sent 4,000 mostly identical resumes to firms in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., with the only difference being the age of the job applicants -- 35 and 62, as indicated by date of high-school graduation. The study found that a younger worker in either state was more than 40% more likely to be called back for interview than a worker 50 and older."