Recruiters are still not giving the over-45s in Australia a fair go.

IN THE United States, the race for the Republican presidential nomination is down to four candidates – the oldest is 76, the favourite is 64, only one is under 60. In Australia, they’d probably all be on the scrapheap.

Whatever you say or think about Americans, they value experience, and not only in high office. It’s in contrast to this country where we are too quick to write off anyone who’s over 50. Prime Minister Julia Gillard should understand this better than most – she reached the milestone last September. Maybe that’s her problem.

I first realised the difference in the attitudes of the two countries when I worked in New York in the late ’90s. I was in my early 40s when I went there, believing that qualified me to be considered an experienced executive. Instead, when I arrived, I very quickly realised I was a relative junior.

Throughout the organisation for which I worked, men and women in their late 50s and 60s ran major components of the business. Their experience was highly prized and well rewarded.

The contrast in the employment attitudes of Australia and the US keeps coming back to me as I encounter increasing numbers of what the statisticians call mature-age workers (45-plus) struggling to find full-time work in professions they’ve worked at most of their adult lives.

There was the human resources manager who’d had three interviews in a week and, yet again, had failed to secure any of the positions on offer; the property investment analyst who hadn’t worked meaningfully for more than a year and didn’t expect to for at least another; the entertainment industry executive made redundant just before Christmas 2010 and still looking unsuccessfully a year later; and the marketing executive who’d pretty much decided he had to change career course if he was ever going to work again. All these men were in their 50s. What a waste. In each case they were highly talented, motivated and possessed enormous experience. Not only that, each was free to put in the hours with which young parents sometimes struggle. They even had realistic salary expectations, each being financially secure, at least for the foreseeable future.

But none of it mattered. Interviews with headhunters came and went and none of them had scored a job offer. A couple had made it down to the last two or three applicants only to fall at the final hurdle. Inevitably it had gone to a younger applicant. Of course, it’s not just men. On Friday, during a stint on ABC radio, a woman told me that despite a degree, two post-grad qualifications and a career in the public service she was now working in a nursery and picking cherries after losing her contracted position.

This week’s unemployment figures showed the economy shed almost 30,000 jobs in December, capping the worst year for employment in two decades. We’ll know more about the plight of older workers when more detailed figures are released by the ABS next week. These will show the numbers of mature workers who no longer participate in the workforce – perhaps because they’ve given up looking for jobs and have turned to their super or pensions – as well as those who are underemployed. The latter group are people who would do more work if they could, including those older workers who’ve taken lesser jobs, part-time work, contracting or consulting when pushed out of full-time roles. It’s a pretty fair bet those figures will show the plight of mature-age workers is worsening.

Of course, some of this is due to the economic cycle, but there’s little doubt a large chunk of the problem comes down to simple blind prejudice. In a country that’s ageing – the proportion of the Australian population 65 years and over is likely to nearly double between 2007 and 2056, with the proportion of people over 85 predicted to almost quadruple – recruiters are turning their backs on older workers.

They don’t do it overtly because that would be illegal. Instead, older workers are screened out early by employers who’ve told recruiters they don’t want anyone over 40. Or, they place job ads that use code words for ”young”, such as ”innovative”, ”dynamic” and ”creative”.

The problem was highlighted in a 2010 report prepared by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Entitled Age Discrimination: Exposing the Hidden Barrier for Mature Age Workers, it warned that while there are strong messages from the government that people should be working to at least 67 years of age, people over 45 can face invisible and accepted barriers to their recruitment and continued employment. White collar, blue collar, it’s all the same.

”Quite apart from the impacts of serious financial stress, the loss of sense of self and the perceived status people gain from being in quality paid work has been linked to inactivity, cognitive decline, depression and social isolation,” the report said.

Putting workers on the scrapheap at 50 is something we can’t afford as a society. We risk having a meaningful working life of just 30 years and half a century outside employment, given current life expectancies. The system’s not working.

Bruce Guthrie is a former editor of The Age, The Sunday Age and Herald Sun.

Twitter: @brucerguthrie

Source: SMH.com.au

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