Sunday, February 01, 2009
Businesses are keeping older workers
Business Week reports that shrinking businesses are laying off younger workers disproportionately, and keeping or recruiting older workers.
Surprisingly, it turns out, many companies are keeping older staffers, at least for now, even if they earn more and incur higher medical costs. "Seniority matters," says Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, who runs Boston College's Sloan Center on Aging & Work...
That's a big change from the last serious recession, in 1990-91, when older workers, especially in manufacturing, were hard-hit. Today's pattern is closer to that of the mild 2001 recession, when older workers did reasonably well.
Business Week attributes this to a fear of age discrimination suits (ludicrously, federal employment discrimination law prohibitions discrimination against people over the age of 40, as if that might happen to people in their forties) and the belief in some companies that older workers have a better work ethic.
All of that may be true, but there is something else going on. "Older" workers today are 18 years younger than the older workers of 1990-91. They are entirely different people. Back then, older workers were "silent generation" types born in the 1930s and imprinted with the workplace values of the 1950s and 1960s, a time when big American companies dominated the global economy and there was relatively little turmoil in the workplace. Many (not all) of the workers of that generation learned too late that if they do not constantly learn and adapt they will figuratively die, and that made them easy targets when competition or economic stress forced headcount reductions.
Not so with today's "older" workers, who cut their teeth in a much more competitive and volatile economic climate of the 1970s. If they work in "hard" America
, at least, they know that nothing will come to them of right. They are more adaptable, which in turn has made them more valuable to their employer and more important to America.7 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Sun Feb 01, 10:11:00 AM:
TH: "who cut their teeth in a much more competitive and volatile economic climate of the 1970s"
The easiest way for an entrepreneur to make money is to find a pile of business somebody else has and take it away from them. You do it through lower prices or personal relationships or better customer service or whatever else it takes. That's the most important thing to know.
By JPMcT, at
Sun Feb 01, 10:29:00 AM:
When one examines the revenues of Circuit City over the past ten years and draws on the time line the point at which they laid off their experienced sales staff in lieu of hiring "newbie" sales staff...the decline in revenue was dramatic.
Unlike government, business learns fast.
By 
, at
Sun Feb 01, 11:26:00 AM:
I told my kids I was one of the last living humans who heard the executives talk about "loyalty" at the company picnic - without any conscious irony. The take-away for them, which I made explicit, was "You are Kleenex. 'Your' company will blow their nose or jack off into you and toss you." Then we discussed the countervailing powers a worker has - the emergency fund; getting a house paid off as quickly as possible via roommates; maxing your 401(K) contributions; and most of all, constantly learning, staying lively and valuable until you can exit the work force.
By , at
Sun Feb 01, 01:23:00 PM:
The other issue is that these are the core knowledge holders in you comapany. When good times return, they will be far more able to train the new people. Its akin to a good NCO program in the military.
By , at
Sun Feb 01, 01:58:00 PM:
"ludicrously, federal employment discrimination law prohibitions discrimination against people over the age of 40, as if that might happen to people in their forties"
It's good to be the king, eh Tigerhawk? Layoffs happen to people in their forties, and strangely enough, no supervisor hands you a pink slip with a card saying, "So long, geezer. We're trading you in on the 2 20-year-olds. Call 123-4567 for a good employment attorney." And there assuredly is discrimination against people in their 50s.
It's nice to hear companies are keeping their older workers. I'll go down to the unemployment office and let my brother know.
By SR, at
Sun Feb 01, 02:43:00 PM:
Here's where the Democrats are waring blinders. In their zeal to punish "the rich," they want every white collar worker laid off go pick up a paint brush and paint a bridge. Better to simply cut the taxes on the companies that laid them off in the first place. They need no re-training.
By blake, at
Mon Feb 02, 03:02:00 PM:
In the tech fields, you're an old man at 40.
It's like pro-ball, only without the money. And the chicks. And the fame.
Our knees still work when we're 50, though, so we got that going for us.
