There’s no doubt age bias is alive and well in some American workplaces, but older job seekers can generally sidestep it by applying to companies which say they embrace this segment of the labor pool.
For instance, Home Depot, Borders, Cingular, CVS/pharmacy, Kelly Services, Manpower, MetLife, New York Life Insurance and Walgreens are just some of the companies on AARP’s list of featured employers — and they’re all companies which say they’re eager to hire older workers. Â Â
Often, these companies turn to gray-haired job seekers as a response to labor shortages in their industries, said Deborah Russell, AARP’s director of work force issues.
These companies “are looking at quite a few different potential pools of workers that might serve them well in filling their labor shortage, and the mature work force is one of those pools they’re reaching out to,” she said. See the AARP page on featured employers.
Meanwhile, Seniors4Hire.org is posting job ads from a wide variety of employers who are willing to hire older workers, said Renee Ward, founder of Seniors4hire.org and a principal at The Forward Group, the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based publisher of the site. Those postings include:
- A law office in Virginia seeking assistant case managers, whom it will train.
- A supply company in Maryland looking for an accountant.
- A real estate firm near Chicago needing a part-time financial consultant.
- An engineering firm in Indiana seeking HVAC engineers.
- A small investment firm looking for a mail clerk.
- A Seattle law firm needing customer-service help.
Short supply
And, even if they’re not yet actively going after older workers, plenty of other companies are facing labor shortages in their industries — a situation likely to prompt them to be more welcoming of older faces.
The five fastest growing industries in terms of hiring senior-level executives — who, by virtue of their experience tend to be older — are health care, financial services, high tech, business services and defense/aerospace, according to ExecuNet, a job-posting and networking site focused on job openings for senior executives.
Stories of age bias tend to diminish as a labor market tightens, said Dave Opton, chief executive and founder of the Norwalk, Conn.-based ExecuNet.
“What we certainly have seen over the last 24 months or so, as the economy has started to sustain an upward trend, is that our members are in fact accepting jobs that are at the six-figure level and beyond, and they’re doing it in a shorter period of time because the demand is there,” Opton said.
Meanwhile, Manpower, the staffing firm, reported earlier this year that U.S. employers are having the most trouble filling the following 10 positions: Sales representatives, engineers, nurses/health care, technicians (information technology, production), accountants, administrative assistants, drivers, call-center operators, machinists (manufacturing, production) and management/executive positions.
And, looking to the future, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that these 10 occupations will add the most new jobs between 2004 and 2014:
- Retail sales, 736,000 new jobs
- Registered nurses, 703,000
- Postsecondary teachers, 524,000
- Customer service representatives, 471,000
- Janitors, 440,000
- Waiters and waitresses, 376,000
- Food preparation and serving, 367,000
- Home health aides, 350,000
- Nursing aides, 325,000
- General and operations managers, 308,000
Of course, probably only the most physically active older job-seekers will want to undertake some of these jobs, such as registered nurses, waiters and janitors.
But not far behind on this list — still in the top 30 of occupations adding the most jobs — are some less physically demanding jobs, including accountants, office clerks, receptionists, computer software engineers, executive secretaries, sales representatives, teacher assistants and computer systems analysts.
Shift in job descriptions
Also, job requirements are changing, some say, as employers begin to change their practices in light of an aging work force.
In 1984, there were fewer than 15 million workers 55 or older in the labor force. That jumped to 23 million in 2004, and is projected to climb to more than 34 million by 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For instance, when it comes to nursing, “health-care organizations have realized that we need to actually adjust the way work gets done and limit the physical requirements of the job, or provide different types of support for the mature workers [so people can] stay employed with lesser physical requirements,” said Roselyn Feinsod, a principal at Towers Perrin, which consults with companies on work-force planning issues.
No comments yet.