“Even though I’m writing programming code better than any time in my life,” wrote one, “if I returned to IT I’d be eaten alive, not by the youngsters , but by aggressively competitive middle managers, who are driven to distraction to find productivity gains.”
These employers agreed that older workers performed just as well as younger ones; they just don’t want to hire them. This chimes with US research suggesting that Covid gave businesses an excuse to push out older workers – some permanently. Of the 3.8 million Americans between 55 and 74 who lost their jobs after March 2020, around 400,000 remained unemployed a year later, according to the US Schwartz Center.
What to do? Every ageing nation needs to keep people working longer. Age stereotypes clearly need to be challenged. But perhaps we also need to update the conventional career timetable in our heads: expecting to get on the fast track around 30, just when we might want to start a family, and mentally starting to exit after 50.
what in the capitalist hellscape is this shit, let old folk retire for fucks sake