Seasoned but slighted by the market

Older job seekers say it feels like an age of ‘no elders need apply’

May 07, 2011|By Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff

Leon Tenofsky, 69, was at the Employment & Training Resources center… (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)

NORWOOD — One by one, job seekers in their 50s and 60s went around the room at the Employment & Training Resources center, lamenting the difficulties of looking for work in a market flooded with younger talent.

A former apartment manager said young interviewers seemed intimidated by her. An electrical contractor with 30 years’ experience revealed to the group that he was replaced by a 21-year-old. Many of them felt slighted by prospective employers.

A number of older job seekers are finding that their age is working against them during this painfully slow recovery. People age 55 and older are unemployed for a year on average — more than two months longer than younger workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some employers are scared away by the higher pay and health care costs that can come with hiring older workers, as well as the perception that an older hire may not be motivated to learn new skills.

Michael Small, a 50-year-old Kittery, Maine, resident who has been looking for a full-time information technology job for six years, imagines prospective employers thinking: “He’s an old dog. I can’t teach him new tricks.’’

The US economy added far more jobs than expected last month, according to data released yesterday by the Labor Department, but there are still more than 13 million people out of work. The unemployment rate for workers over age 55 is lower than the overall national average, partly due to the number of people in that age bracket who decide to retire, but those forced out of work before their planned retirement, and who don’t have enough to live on, are putting added strain on the government and the economy.

From 2007 to 2009, the number of 63-year-olds filing early for Social Security jumped by nearly 20 percent, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Among 62-year-olds, it was up 42 percent. Not only are those people collecting less money, they’re also not paying taxes on employment income and are more likely to apply for other government aid, said director Andrew Sum.

“Throwing these older workers out of the labor market comes at a very high cost,’’ he said.

Those older people who are still employed are staying on the job longer than they used to. In 1995, only 12 percent of people surveyed in a Gallup Poll said they planned to work beyond age 65; in 2010, that number had risen to 34 percent.

Peter Honig, 53, lost his job as vice president of engineering three years ago when the New Hampshire security systems company he was working for folded. During a year-long job search in which he failed to land a single interview, Honig was at an alumni event where he realized that every person over the age of 50 — about a dozen in all — were unemployed.