BABY BOOMERS HAVE BEEN PUT OUT TO PASTURE YET NO ONE CARES
Massive age discrimination is currently occurring and the Baby Boomer generation is its primary target. Companies are taking advantage of the pandemic to cull their ranks of white-collar experienced employees to eliminate the higher salaries that accompany that experience; salaries which those employees earned over years of hard work and quality performance. It’s one thing if employees need to be eliminated because of negative business impacts from the pandemic; it’s another thing — and an illegal one — to replace qualified employees with younger ones because of age for any reason.
Forbes has written a few articles verifying this on-going discrimination, and Indeed.com, the large online job site, has also acknowledged this fact from its internal statistics. Indeed.com actually advises candidates to eliminate as many references to age/dates as possible to try and pass initial screening processes (many automated) in hopes of simply securing an interview! I assume one must also wear a wig or dye one’s hair during that interview to have any hope of continuing the deception until an offer is made based on qualifications only. We’ve now reached the point where too much experience is considered bad and one has to hide the experience that makes you most qualified for a job. If that doesn’t defy common sense, what does?
The way in which companies try to disguise what is taking place in their job ads is almost comical. Since when do employers put a cap on the maximum experience for a job, such as “5–10 years’ experience”? Since when is someone with less experience more desirable than someone with more experience who meets the job requirements and is willing to do the job for the salary offered? Why wouldn’t the company want the experienced candidate’s resume? Yet, today’s companies are shunning more experienced candidates, and this massive age discrimination campaign is overtly occurring with little more than a whimper of outrage. Other than the Forbes articles mentioned, I haven’t heard a peep out of the mainstream media about it. But I’ll bet you know a Boomer who has been the victim of this discrimination in the last year.
Obviously being the most qualified candidate or the best job performer is no longer an important factor in U.S. company hiring. Is this merely a short term focus on lowering salary expense? Or is social engineering of our new “woke” society to further other goals? The pandemic definitely provided an opportunity to replace older employees to improve the “diversity” of a company’s workforce. Doing so would definitely satisfy more aggressive and vocal interest groups and the “progressive” goal of social quotas. According to some vocal politicians, it’s no longer about equal opportunity; it’s about equal outcomes, regardless of the fact that not everyone is equal in intelligence, and other mental and physical abilities that impact job performance Clearly the least vocal and active group via social media would be Boomers, as most of them likely don’t use it actively. So out with the Boomers and in with groups that the mainstream media and politicians have told us to focus on. What better time could there be for a company to insulate itself from attack/boycott for insufficient “diversity” in areas that are more “woke” than age today (e.g., race, gender, sexual identity, etc.)? Apparently they don’t believe that employing the most qualified employees usually produces the best results — especially if one of those qualifications is experience. If they are wrong in this new pursuit, it should only be a matter of time before they are surpassed by their rivals who are more focused on producing and selling the best products possible using experience that is so readily available.
It appears the new norm will be millions of Boomers unemployed for a long time, if not for the rest of their “working lives”. Many are about to discover that their “golden years” may be the worst years of their lives. Most do not have adequate savings to retire and Social Security is insufficient to support their lifestyles at this stage of their lives; most didn’t plan on retiring around 55 or shortly after. Further, taking SS benefits before 70 can cause the loss of 25% of the benefits one would receive upon retiring at 70, and that loss will harm them for the rest of their lives.
This is a huge national travesty. It is not only unfair and wrong, but as the expression goes, “it’s bad for business” too. History has shown, over and over, the importance and value of experience in every aspect of life. Yet history has no value in our “woke” society. Even socialism, which failed over 40 times in the 1900s (and look at Venezuela now) is back in vogue today as the answer to today’s economic problems. The “new world order” has no room for Boomers and their knowledge. As the expression goes, “They’re history” — and that’s the only reference to “history” the new “woke” society is likely to use.
