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Three Men, Three Ages. Which Do You Like?

July 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

At least that is the conclusion of a new study by Princeton researchers aimed at measuring age discrimination, one of the toughest forms of workplace bias to prove.

The subjects of the experiment — 137 Princeton undergraduates — were shown a video of a man who would be their partner in a trivia contest. His name was Max, he was white, neither handsome nor ugly, wore a checked shirt and said he was from Hamilton, N.J.

What the students did not know was that there were actually three different versions of Max, being played by different actors, 25, 45 and 75 years old.

Each Max adhered to the same script with one exception. When describing himself, half of the time the Max character said he was the kind of person to share his wealth with relatives (the compliant Max); and the other half of the time, Max said he felt no obligation to share (the assertive Max).

The students were then asked their opinion of Max. For those who saw the 25- or 45-year-old Max, it made no difference whether he was compliant or assertive. But students who saw the 75-year-old actor gave the assertive Max a high negative rating.

The results, soon to be published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, illustrate the subtle bias older men and women may face in the work force.

“If you want to be an aging gray panther, and speak your mind to your manager, that’s fine,” said Susan Fiske, a Princeton professor and a co-author of the study with Michael North, who recently completed his Ph.D. “But expect consequences.”

Age discrimination in the workplace has always been harder to identify and quantify than race and sex discrimination. Blacks and women have experienced a long history of being underpaid, which researchers can calculate in salary differentials. The math is less straightforward for older workers. They may have been unfairly demoted, and yet still earn more than their younger co-workers.

There is little doubt that such discrimination exists. When an older man or woman is laid off, it typically takes two to six months longer to find a new job than it takes younger workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the new job is likely to pay considerably less.

During the recent recession, many unemployed older people told a similar story. They sent in their résumé and got called for an interview, but when they walked in, potential employers saw their white hair and that was it.

Feeling discrimination is one thing, proving it another. “It’s simply harder to establish,” said David Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Winning an age discrimination lawsuit has become much harder since a 2009 United States Supreme Court case, Gross vs. FBL Financial Services. Before that, the employee had to show that age was a factor contributing to the layoff. Now, the employee has to show that age was the determining factor leading to the layoff, a much tougher standard.

“Plaintiffs’ attorneys have told us that they will not take age cases anymore because of the Gross decision,” says Laurie McCann, an attorney with AARP.

The older generation, those born from 1946 to 1964, accounts for the fastest-growing segment of workplace discrimination claims. In 2012, 22,875 people filed age claims with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, compared with 15,875 in 1997. That represents 23 percent of all the individuals filing claims in 2012 versus 19 percent in 1997. At the same time, the percentage of people filing race claims has decreased to 33 percent of all claimants, from 36 percent; its held steady at 30 percent for sex discrimination.

With age discrimination claims on the rise, a growing number of academics are undertaking research projects aimed at better identifying it.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 22, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated a financing source for the Princeton study. It received financing from Princeton, the Social Science Research Council, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. It did not receive a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

 

did not receive a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/booming/three-men-three-ages-who-do-you-like.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Profound Weight of Layoffs Seen in Survey

February 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

While about 8 percent of Americans are unemployed, nearly a quarter of Americans say they were laid off at some point during the recession or afterward, according to the survey. More broadly, nearly eight in 10 say they know someone in their circle of family and friends who has lost a job.

“This to me is why the recession was so all-consuming and is likely to influence the American psyche,” said Cliff Zukin, a public policy and political science professor at Rutgers and co-author of the report. “Almost everyone, four out of five, were directly or one step removed from unemployment and all that goes with it financially, socially, psychologically.”

The survey presented a bleak view of the economic future.

A majority of Americans say they think it will be at least six years before the economy is made whole again, if ever. Three in 10 said the economy would never fully recover from the Great Recession.

“Despite significant improvements in the nation’s labor market, American workers’ concerns about unemployment, the job market, job security and the future of the economy have not changed much since we conducted a similar survey in August 2010,” the report said.

Just a third of Americans surveyed in this poll, conducted from Jan. 9-16, said they thought the economy would be better next year, the same share that said so two years earlier.

Of those laid off in recent years, nearly a quarter said they still had not found a job. Re-employment rates for older workers have been particularly bad, with nearly two-thirds of unemployed people 55 and older saying they actively sought a job for more than a year before finding one or had still not found work.

Not surprisingly, those who are unemployed are especially downbeat about many economic issues in addition to their own finances. Of those who were jobless and looking for work, 31 percent said their jobless benefits had run out and 58 percent said they were concerned their benefits would run out before they found work.

Of those who have found work, nearly half say their current job is a step down from the one they lost, and a slim majority say they earn less than they did in their previous job. A quarter of those re-employed said they thought that the hit to their standard of living would be permanent.

The reliance on one’s personal network and savings rather than the social safety net showed up frequently in the survey data.

More people reported borrowing money from friends and family than reported using food stamps. A third cut back on doctors’ visits or medical treatment. A quarter of the unemployed said they had enrolled in retraining programs of some kind; half of them reported paying for the education on their own or through family assistance. Twenty-three percent received some type of government financing for their training programs.

Unemployed workers were more likely than employed workers to say that the government is primarily responsible for helping the jobless. But even then, a majority of the unemployed thought that workers and employers were more responsible for getting people back to work than the government was.

Americans over all were also somewhat less critical of bankers this time than they were two years earlier. About one in three (35 percent) respondents attributed high unemployment levels to the actions of Wall Street, compared with 45 percent in 2010.

Americans were most likely to attribute high unemployment to cheap foreign labor. Four in 10 also said they believed illegal immigrants were taking Americans’ job opportunities — which does not bode well for political support for an amnesty program now being discussed in Washington.

Most people surveyed lost at least some of their savings. Asked about their financial health, six in 10 Americans said their finances would not improve in the next few years; just 16 percent said their family finances were already back to prerecession levels or suffered no loss in the first place.

More educated, better-off people were substantially more likely to report being as financially secure as they were before the recession began.

Responses are based on an online survey conducted by GfK using a nationally representative sample of 1,090 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/business/profound-weight-of-layoffs-seen-in-survey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Economix Blog: Older Workers and Joblessness

December 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As I wrote in an article on Friday, even those who are back at work are not necessarily doing so well: only 7 percent of those who lost jobs after the financial crisis have recovered their income and standard of living. What’s more, the downturn and its aftermath have disproportionately hit people with less education. Even though the unemployment rates of high school dropouts and graduates have fallen from recent highs, they are still much higher than the rate for college graduates.

The Labor Department’s jobs report for November, released Friday morning, also shows that the number of employed high school graduates actually fell by 187,000 over the last 12 months, while the number of employed college graduates has gone up 1.1 million during the same period.

Nevertheless, readers have pointed out that even among the college-educated, there is one cohort that is still feeling more pain: older workers. More than half of all unemployed workers 45 to 54 years old have been out of work for six months or more, and among unemployed 55-to-64-year-olds, close to 60 percent have been searching for work for more than six months.

People in the older of these two groups are worse off than they were a year ago. The median duration of unemployment rose from 36.6 weeks a year ago to 42.7 weeks this November. The younger of the two groups is slightly better off; its median duration of unemployment fell to 27.9 weeks, down from 30.2 weeks a year ago.

For the human faces of these numbers, one reader suggests looking at the site Over 50 and Out of Work.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1cfa536c07a6daaf56a7048487b636c4

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Career Couch: Retirement at 65, or Later? Consider Finances, and Health

October 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A. Consider yourself fortunate if you can choose whether or not to retire. Many older workers have had to postpone retirement because of the volatile stock market and uncertain economy.

First, make sure you would be in a financial position to retire. “You must understand how much money you have access to today and how deeply you are willing to dip into it if you stop earning entirely,” says Steve Langerud, director of professional opportunities and an alumni coach at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.

A trusted financial planner may be able to help you assess whether your 401(k) and/or pension, Social Security income, savings and home equity are enough to support the type of retirement you envision.

Layered atop your financial needs are health concerns, which, of course, can arise suddenly, Mr. Langerud says. Look at your health history and make a plan that includes the possibility of illness, he says.

Q. What else should you consider when deciding whether to retire?

A. Life expectancies keep rising , so realize that if you retire at 65, you are likely to have many more productive years ahead of you than retirees in previous generations did. This will affect your financial and your psychological health.

“People retiring lose their job and title, which are often tied up with their identity,” says David D. Corbett, founder of New Directions, a Boston firm that helps senior-level executives with career transitions. “It can also be isolating for many, not having work colleagues or a corporate infrastructure.”

Traditional retirement may lead to a lack of intellectual engagement, which is crucial for good health, says Gary J. Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

If you think of the brain as a computer, physical and mental activity are “essentially upgrading its hardware and programming,” Dr. Kennedy says. If we don’t stay engaged, cognitive processes slow down and depression often sets in, he says.

Q. You would like to remain employed at your company but want to make some changes, like cutting back on hours, working in a different position or both. Is management likely to be receptive?

A. Companies are accustomed to helping older workers plan for retirement but not for transitions, says Marc Freedman, author of “The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife” and chief executive of Civic Ventures, a group that focuses on life beyond age 50.

Yet your company may be receptive to changing your role while you’re still employed, as many businesses worry about losing experienced employees and their accumulated knowledge.

As you discuss new roles with management, keep in mind that you are a resource to the company, not a drain, Mr. Kennedy says, and that you “still have valuable contributions to make.”

Q. Say you decide to leave your current employer, but want to keep using your skills in some way. Where and how can you do that?

A. Conduct a self-assessment. Look at your career, what you’ve accomplished and what you feel is left to be done. “The older our clients get, the further back in their history they look for clues as to what they will do later in life,” says Mr. Corbett, author of “Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose and Passion After 50.”

“Write a résumé that ends the day you got your first job,” he says. “Look at the courses you took that you liked but couldn’t pursue professionally, outside activities and hobbies.”

Ask family and friends to suggest ways to reach beyond your career and reconnect with the things you enjoy. “Assemble a personal board of peer advisers, where each of you gives advice to the others about moving forward,” Mr. Corbett says. “Share with them what you would love to do and ask for feedback about how to do it. You will get some great ideas this way.”

You should also note your transferrable skills and where or how you could use them, says Stephen Moore, manager of human resource services at Insperity, a business performance solutions provider in Kingwood, Tex.

“I recently worked with a senior-level individual who was successful in his career, comfortable financially and could have stopped working,” Mr. Moore says. “He loved woodworking, so he took a job at Home Depot. He stayed employed and connected to a community, and was able to talk about and do something he really loved.”

Mr. Freedman recommends that you prepare for this later-life transition by saving money while in your 50s for things like additional education or unpaid apprenticeships and internships. “Reinvention sounds very romantic, but it’s also hard,” he says. “So it helps to prepare as much as you can.”

E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d7b3a7af0a43c8a31951d77429f09d7a

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: , ,

Economix: Older Workers Without Jobs Face Longest Time Out of Work

May 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

After reaching record highs month after month, the typical length of time a jobless worker in the United States has been unemployed finally fell in April, to “only” 38.3 weeks. But the outlook is looking bleaker for the nation’s older workers.

Sure, older workers are much less likely to be unemployed than their younger counterparts. Here’s a look at unemployment rates by age:

DESCRIPTIONSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics Note: The figures are presented as a 12-month moving average because not all age groups had seasonally-adjusted data available.

As you can see, the older you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed. The unemployment rate for people over age 65 is about 6.5 percent, taken on a 12-month moving average. The unemployment rate for teenagers is nearly four times that.

But if older workers do lose their jobs, their chances of finding another job are extraordinarily low. Here’s a look at the average duration of unemployment (on a 12-month moving average), broken down by age of the unemployed:

DESCRIPTIONSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics Note: The figures are presented as a 12-month moving average to adjust for seasonality.

The average jobless person over age 65 has been looking for work for 43.9 weeks. For someone between the ages of 55 and 64, the typical duration is 44.6 weeks, just a few weeks shy of a year. The average unemployment spells for both of these groups are at record highs.

The average teenager, on the other hand, has been looking for less than half that time, at 19.9 weeks.

Why are older workers more likely to be stuck in a seemingly eternal jobless limbo?

Some of it has to do with the fact that younger workers are more likely to drop out of the labor force entirely if they are unable to find a job after weeks of searching. Some young workers may go back to school, and some may move in with their parents. Wherever they end up, if they’ve dropped out of the labor force, they’re no longer technically counted as unemployed.

Additionally, older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries in structural decline. Before the Great Recession, these industries — like manufacturing and newspapers — had probably been trying to shrink through attrition, meaning that they hired fewer young people to replace retiring workers, meaning offices and factories got gradually older. As the economy soured, these employers started resorting to more layoffs.

Now their former employees are structurally displaced, and probably less likely to go back to school for retraining or to move across the country where the job market may be better. After all, older workers are more likely to own their own homes, and so are less mobile.

Finally there is the possibility of age discrimination. Nearly every out-of-work American over the age of 45 I’ve spoken with has complained that prejudice is keeping him or her from getting a job.

Age discrimination is hard to prove, especially since employers are unlikely to inform applicants that age factored into the hiring decision. (Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, young people — and whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women and men — also all seem to think that prejudice explains why they’re out of work.)

In any case these long durations of unemployment for older workers are particularly troubling, since the longer workers are out of the work the less employable they become. Lengthening spells of joblessness therefore do not bode well for the country’s ability to ever get displaced older workers back into gainful employment.

When we talk about the scarring effect of unemployment, we’re usually referring to the scars on young people’s careers. But there is also much to worry about the permanent damage that joblessness can wreak on older workers, many of whom feel they’re being summarily kicked out of the labor force.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=71c62ef0c3c400ba9d0dab668a663a82

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,