Bonnie Erbe

In Recession, Age Discrimination Is More Prominent Than Racism

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April 13, 2009 RSS Feed Print
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By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

The good news for boomers, or workers 45 and older, is that if you were employed before the recession, you're less likely than younger workers to be fired (former GMC Chair Rick Wagoner one noted exception, however).

The bad news is:

Workers ages 45 and over form a disproportionate share of the hard-luck recession category, the long-term unemployed—those who have been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On average, laid-off workers in this age group were out of work 22.2 weeks in 2008, compared with 16.2 weeks for younger workers. Even when they finally land jobs, they typically experience a much steeper drop in earnings than their younger counterparts.

So is ageism alive and well (even thriving perhaps?) in the current downturn? You betcha. Ageism, as is the case with sexism and with homophobe-ism, are dying harder than racism. We still experience plenty of all four, but the lesson of last November is racism is racing for the door a lot more quickly than other nasty societal stereotypes.

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Tags:
aging,
racism,
recession,
discrimination,
Bureau of Labor Statistics

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TQwSqCIp of 1:47PM August 10, 2009

I read your comment with a certain amount of interest. I, like you, were highly amused by someone elses hypocrisy. Allow me to make gross assumptions like you did. I bet you are a bleeding heart liberal who gets riled up about prejudice and judgements, and yet right here you have taken someones comment about the unborn to mean a whole host of other things, such as being conservative and not caring for young children.

I think that many conservatives who do what you describe believe that everyone deserves the right to be born, but anything beyond that they are hesistant to do. I believe that this is a reasonable case, and question how you can oppose this. Please take your one dimensional view on this subject elsewhere.

On the topic at hand, I was very amused at Bonnie Erbe's comments on ageism. She assumes that businesses (which are run by the older section of our population) are more willing to fire older workers and hire younger workers out of some sort of prejudice akin to racism. This is laughable at best. Businesses are more inclined to hire these younger workers because they are willing to work for less, and will be able to supply the company with years of working that their more elderly peers cannot. I simply do not understand how you can compare this to racism. But, then again, I am only 17, and my young age would obviously prevent me from being knowledgible about anything, make me lazy, and make me unwilling to work for a reasonable wage.

John Nevins of IL 10:22AM April 14, 2009

Ah. And what of people who have to battle MULTIPLE areas of discrimination, like my 67-year-old Black mother? What is hurting her odds of employment most? This was more than a little facile in terms of analysis.

Daniel of NY 9:37AM April 14, 2009

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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