An American study exposes what we’ve all suspected: the cards are stacked against anyone over 50.
In one episode of The Good Wife, the main character Alicia Florrick is warned that a smart, attractive younger lawyer named Caitlin is after her job. “Watch out,” she’s told, “She is a piranha.” Meanwhile, in real life, The Guardian profiles a woman in her 50s being systematically sidelined: “I am denied opportunities given to younger members of staff… I constantly volunteer for new projects but am not included in the team and made to feel invisible.”
This isn’t just workplace drama – it’s a microcosm of Britain’s hidden employment crisis. What The Good Wife portrayed as personal rivalry reflects a far more systematic problem: an entire economy that has quietly but decisively tilted against older workers. The difference is that while television conflicts resolve in an hour, real-world age discrimination destroys lives and wastes decades of accumulated expertise.
There’s something deliciously appropriate about discovering that age discrimination in hiring isn’t just the paranoid fantasy of bitter fifty-somethings clutching their CVs in desperation. It’s real, it’s systematic, and now we have the numbers to prove it.
The Great Experiment
A trio of American academics – David Neumark, Ian Burn, and Patrick Button – have done what no one in Britain seems willing to do: actually test whether employers discriminate against older workers. Their method was beautifully simple and devastatingly effective: create thousands of fake job applications, make them identical in every respect except age, and see who gets called back.
They didn’t mess about. They submitted CVs for jobs employing “large numbers of fairly low-skilled workers of all ages” – administrative assistants, security guards, retail sales staff. Nothing requiring the sort of cognitive flexibility that HR departments seem to prize above actual competence. The scale was impressive: “more than 13,000 positions in 12 cities – more than 40,000 putative applicants.”
And boy, did it work.
The Unsurprising Surprise
“Overall, the callback rate was higher for younger applicants than for older applicants, pointing to age discrimination in hiring.” There it is, in the dry language of academia: proof that what every over-50 job seeker has long suspected is absolutely true.
But here’s where it gets particularly grim: “women face worse age discrimination than men.” According to the Urban Institute, unemployed women aged 50-61 are 18 per cent less likely to be hired compared to women aged 25-34. Women who are 62 or older face 50 per cent worse odds. In the US, anyone born in 1960 or later can only retire at 67. Predictably, the fastest-growing group moving into poverty are women between 60 and 64.
This systematic exclusion isn’t just cruel – it’s economically insane. Research from multiple sources now demonstrates that older workers often outperform their younger colleagues in crucial metrics.
The Evidence That Employers Ignore
At BMW’s German manufacturing plant, researchers conducted a fascinating experiment. They created an assembly line staffed entirely with workers whose average age was 47 – the projected workforce age by 2017. The results were remarkable: the older workers’ line became as productive as the younger one, but the quality was higher. With simple ergonomic adjustments like wooden floors and adjustable work benches, the line achieved a 7 per cent increase in productivity, below-average absenteeism, and zero defects.
This isn’t an isolated case. When American companies properly train older workers, 86 per cent say they perform as well or better than their younger peers. The stereotype of technology-phobic older workers crumbles under scrutiny. At Kossar’s Bialys & Bagels in New York, 55-year-old Leila initially panicked when the business switched to digital point-of-sale systems, saying “You should just fire me now.” With proper training, she not only mastered two different systems but now operates faster than anyone else in the store.
Yet British employers continue to systematically exclude the very workers who could solve their productivity problems.
The Art of Polite Exclusion
The beauty of modern discrimination is its deniability. You don’t need “No grey hairs need apply” in job adverts. The American researchers found that employers using subtly ageist language – “digital native”, “high energy”, “fresh thinking” – could “reduce the share of applicants over age 40 by 10 percentage points or more”.
British job adverts overflow with such coded language. “Fast-paced environment”, “youthful team”, “cutting-edge technology” – all perfectly legal ways of excluding experienced workers. It’s discrimination with plausible deniability: the perfect crime for the HR age.
One man in the UK decided to go for broke by taking on the Civil Service. Paul Shuttleworth, a BAFTA-winning film-maker, challenged the Civil Service’s use of the term “digital native” in job adverts, arguing it was ageist and discriminatory. He complained after being rejected for several positions and threatened a judicial review, prompting the Cabinet Office to instruct staff to avoid using the term. While the Civil Service denies the term is discriminatory, they have acknowledged its potential for misinterpretation and have taken steps to ensure it is not used in future job postings.
The British Problem
Of course, this is American research, and we might comfort ourselves that things are different here. We have stronger employment protections -surely our employers wouldn’t stoop to such crude prejudice.
Pull the other one.
Anyone who’s spent time in British boardrooms knows that ageism thrives, dressed up in management-speak about “cultural fit” and “bringing fresh energy to the team”. We’re in the middle of a demographic crisis – ageing population, rising pension age, official policy encouraging longer working lives – yet we simultaneously allow employers to exclude older workers systematically.
As one fed-up copywriter, Jess Moody, wrote in response to the war on Civil Service bias: “Brilliant Paul, good luck with the new job and continue to fight on! I’m fed up of employers wanting a 25-year-old with 25 years’ experience.”
The Pension Age Pincer Movement
This connects to the broader scandal of pension age increases. When pension ages rise, “income poverty rates among 65-year-olds more than doubled.” We’re creating a generation trapped between jobs they can’t get and pensions they can’t claim.
The American study shows exactly how this trap operates. Older workers face “longer unemployment durations”- three times as long as their younger counterparts – not because they’re less capable, but because employers simply won’t hire them.
The Economic Stupidity
Setting aside moral arguments, age discrimination is economically stupid. Britain faces severe skills shortages. We need an ageing population to work longer. Yet we systematically exclude experienced workers who could fill critical gaps.
The irony is profound: policymakers encourage longer working lives while the job market excludes older workers. It’s like trying to fill a bath with the plug out.
The Way Forward
Dr Ruth Finkelstein from Columbia University’s Ageing Centre offers a different approach through her Age Smart Employer initiative: “We must revise the policies and practices that we use as employers to push people out of the workplace… we interview businesses so we can guide employers about how to design a workplace where different generations benefit from working together.”
Her research documenting ten advantages of older workers – from superior customer relationships to crisis leadership – shows what happens when prejudice gives way to evidence. Companies like Bridge Cleaners & Tailors discovered that during Hurricane Sandy, their older workers showed extraordinary dedication, working through the night to restore operations despite no pay obligation.
The American research suggests several solutions. Stronger legal protections help, but only if enforced. Better monitoring of hiring practices could expose discrimination. Most importantly, we must recognise this isn’t a problem older workers can solve alone – it’s a matter for society.
The Bottom Line
The American study has quantified what everyone knew: the jobs market is rigged against older workers. The question is whether we’ll act, or continue the polite fiction that CV workshops solve systematic discrimination.
The research is unequivocal: when applications differed only by age, younger applicants consistently got more callbacks. This isn’t subtle bias – it’s straightforward discrimination. Yet we continue pretending older workers’ employment problems are their own fault.
Given Britain’s track record on inequality, don’t hold your breath. But at least now we have numbers to prove what’s really happening. The BMW assembly line workers, the technology-adapting shop assistants, the crisis-managing dry cleaners – they’re all testament to what we’re wasting. And with such a large slice of the consumer market still involving the so-called “silver pound”, it could just be that those dozy, dopey 50-year-olds know how to part people from their money.
That’s something. Whether it’s enough remains to be seen.
The research discussed is from Age Discrimination’s Challenge to the American Economy by David Neumark, Ian Burn, and Patrick Button, published in the NBER Reporter, 2022.
Hollywood has already dramatised what the research lays bare. In The Intern, Robert De Niro plays a 70-year-old widower who joins a fast-paced tech startup run by Anne Hathaway’s character. The film flips the ageist script, showing that experience, loyalty, and perspective aren’t relics of the past but real assets in a modern workplace. It’s a fictional reminder of what too many employers ignore in real life – older workers bring value you can’t fake with “fresh energy” alone.
Watch the trailer below:
