Yep. Item 1. 15 percent compulsory super now!

The vectors of analysis on this problem are so many, it's hard to know where to start. Education, me thinks. The facts coming out of DEEWR and other agencies speak for themselves. If we want to keep a broad tax base, and to fund future infrastructure and services, we need to keep productivity high. To do that we need to eliminate obstacles to older age re-employment. It's both an economic and social justice issue.

I'm damned if I know why we think people at 65 should retire (unless they want to) or that people with grey hair are 'past it'. These arbitary boundaries to do with age should be swept away.

I'd be interested to know if on-line ads are counted like that as the figures are used as an indice for economic growth (ANZ or Access?). I forget.

Here are your reasons:
1) Technology has made a lot more jobs redundant than have been created. Most are still filled by staff, they have just moved up to management where new processes and activities are created to fill in time.
A few more technology jumps and we are getting close to "android economy": only decision makers and artists needed, manual labor done 90% by machine. We are more than 1/2 way now. Our political system will stuggle with this!
2) The resulting over-abundance of management in relation to non-management (ie. the "talkers" vs "doers" ratio) has created a political culture where back-scratching, hush money (big exec payouts), and bullying are prevelant. I have seen this trend in Government, banking and utilities sectors. The bigger a cock-up, the less accountability.
3) Managing "up" takes precedence over "down". "Up" is where the daggers come from and where the butts that must be kissed are. I work in IT and we have legions of "Project Managers" now that do not even know what Critical Path Analysis (Core PM skill) is! The more senior, the more useless is the rule.
4) The really bad management culture is making organisations really inefficient...leading to a fake "skills crisis".
5) "Soft skills", highly prized by HR departments and consultants are considered essential and "hard skills"(what used to be called "skill") is necessary only for juniors...so if your aiming for the top, you definately do not put "hard skill" on show. Soft skills are relative so you must be "in the loop"...hard for older workers.
6) Since prohibition a large portion of our economy is "black". Lots of "legitimate" busineses ride the black market: Horse Racing, Casinos, and many, many small busnesses. Crime rarely actually creates wealth, so the corruption of our economy due the drugs enforement industry is a net drain. 80% of police budget is due to prohibition alone. Older skilled workers have no place in a blck economy unless they start younger or are part of the family.
In short: unaccountable management, short sighted labor policies.

Good article to which one might add that middle-aged, middle management can be specifically targeted for retrenchment, because the employer can milk the assets from superfunds. Westpac retrenched long serving managers, in the early 1990s, and the actuaries found $700 million dollars for the Bank's coffers. The Bank paid-out simple interst on the contributions, but benefitted from the huge equity built-up in the fund.

yes, and then Westpac wrote off a billion in over valued assets (buildings) in the late 90s.

I know people in their 40s and 50s who are way under employed. They're white collar but have been chucked on the scrap heap. Ozandy is right about technics re manufacturing but not so sure re public service. Could be.

Culling middle management created a flatter organisational structure, saved money on salaries but didn't improve productivity. I'm all for lean or flat structures but blind freddy knows that sooner or later the government will have to increase taxes to fill central revenue to pay for pensions and health care (more likely the former).

They ain't going to like that. No one is going for that option. Pray the mining boom continues for the next 50 years. The dream of self funded retirement will be just that. A dream. Pack 'em in to caravan parks on the outskirts of town!

"Cultural Fit" is the trojan horse for discrimination of any sort. I should know. Throughout my youth I was denied employment many times, passed over for jobs in my skill set while mediocre, less skilled candidates were placed ahead of me because they were younger or more physically attractive, or of a higher socio-economic status than myself.

The extent of the discrimination was so pervasive and persistent that it severely affected my mental health, I had breakdown, and am now a disability pensioner in my mid-thirties, in fair to poor health, losing my teeth due to a third world public dental system, and ironically now and in later years my prospects will be much more diminished because so many recruiters and employers sought to deny me the experience and use of my skills that would have aided my long-term career development. There is no fair go in Australia, I gave up believing in fair gos and compassion years ago.

Could it be that their skill sets are out of date? Marketing has always been a young person's field.

Engineering is so in demand that people in their 70s are paid to work when they want, just to fill vacancies.

It depends whether you can do or be what people need.

There is discrimination against older workers for a variety of reasons

1. superannuation is still predominantly employer based
- so that taking on an older worker is going to cost your existing workers
- it pays the employer super fund to retrench older workers

2. many job agencies "head hunters" use good looking young sales people to recruit and place staff. The recruiter doesn't know the business, doesn't understand the skill sets required to do the job, and doesn't understand the experience of the candidate. Headhunters will store your resume on their database and update it once a year, so it has to be tailored to the job you want them to represent you for. Never provide the 15 page gory detail resume - head hunters are ILLITERATE

3. Given 2 above, older job hunters should look at their skills and write a resume to fit one job description, only including the last 5 years of experience relevant to that position and place it with one agency.
Look at another job description you could fill and write a resume for that position and place with another agency. A resume should be 3 pages max.

4. Given 2 above, contact every one you know tell them about your latest exotic holiday and invite them out for coffee.

5. you could try volunteering, both to weasel your way into an organisation but also to polish the resume. Don't volunteer for any worthwhile activity that doesn't directly translate to a tradeable job skill.

I am very angry at the government concern about increasing the workforce participation rate [actually by a very small amount], its inability to compile meaningful employment statistics and its refusal to overhaul the superannuation contribution system to make older workers less vulnerable to unemployment.

There is a tendency for the workforce youngsters to do the detailed work and the older folk to manage. The assumption is that youngsters do the detailed technical work and the elders manage. This has its basis in historic precedent when the youngsters were stronger and the elders had the experience to avoid dangerous situations as well as reduced strength.

Most Australians no longer do hard physical labour so these considerations are no longer relevant.

In IT the youngsters usually know the detail and their elders don't, but on legacy systems there is no reason to stop 55+ year old Australians writing Cobol code instead of importing Indian and Israeli programmers. Ozandy I can't see why your organisation doesn't hire project managers with PMI education plus experience. Perhaps your management is more comfortable dealing with their mates who do things the way they have always been done rather than running a professional IT department. Perhaps your management is terrified of older workers who can't be coerced into working 36 hours straight to cover for management ineptitude. Or workers who roll their eyes at the latest silly suggestion from the young, inexperienced and uneducated manager who specialises in sucking up to the boss

For the life of me, I can't understand why anybody would want to be a wage slave for any longer than they have to. Life is too short, and there's so much to do in the world.

I'm in my early 50s and semi-retired. We have our own small business that pays the bills, some investments and we own our own house. We owe nobody anything, so what would be the point of wasting what remains of our healthy lives working for somebody else?

Personally, I'd rather go fishing :)

CJMorgan,
you're very fortunate. Were you a public servant before you started a hobby business ?
Sarcasm aside, most people in small business are battling from dawn till dusk to satisfy the taxman's hunger to take from those who need to give to those who don't care where it comes from.

This is a very interesting topic however it really depends on the industry for witch older people are seeking work in.

As the owner of two retail butchery outlets I can tell you that I will pick a butcher over 50 in preference to a younger one every time. Why? because they have done the hard yards and learned the hard way, don't have this perception that the world owes me a living and have skills that are very hard to gather these days due to the changes in industry training over the past decade or so.
Of my last 5 employees, 3 of them have been 50+

Electricians are similar. Modern day sparky's are great at replacing new for old but when it comes to re-wiring or fixing something they just don't cut the mustard. Older sparky's are in more demand than ever before due to their broad knowledge and skill levels.

Another problem is that in the modern day workforce you are judged by the paper you carry rather than the skills you posses. What I mean is that there are many older folk with great industry skills but, because they don't hold a piece of paper that states that they are 'qualified' then they are simply overlooked in preference for a younger person that has the certification.

Back to my industry, many of our best butchers sit at home on the pension because if they work just one day per week their pension is cut. Talk about skill shortages, many of these people are highly skilled yet punnished if they dare put these skills to use.

On the same day this article appeared on Online Opinion, one of the main Dutch newspapers, Trouw, had an article on the same subject and much of the article's content was the same. The string of reactions illustrated how big the problem is and how much this has been neglected too long by the media. I wonder if we are dealing with an international - Western - problem here.

The problem described in the article is much bigger than generally acknowledged and it would be a good thing if there would be more media attention.

After I arrived in Australia, nearly six years ago (Australian partner, that's why), I thought it wouldn't be too much of a problem to find a job. University degree, multilingual. In the end I guess I may call myself lucky that I found a job three months after I started applying through agencies. Some arrogant little Gen Y brats at recruitment agencies treated over-40's me as if I had little more than one brain cell, this mainly because I wasn't aware of some computer basics you learn in a day, simply because I had never had to use them.

When I was made redundant two years ago the whole thing started again. The most frightening thing is that your feelings of self-esteem go down the drain if this process takes too long, and I realised how little most outsiders are aware of this fact.

I have felt desperate at times, but through a lucky combination of having the right people believe in me - including recruitment agencies that were able to really assess my potential -, keeping my eyes open for all options within an organisation and being at the right place at the right time, I ended up in a great job and I am doing what I've always wanted to do. In the end things may work out, but only 'may'. People shouldn't be desperate, but it definitely takes some determination.

And again: there should be more - much more - media attention for this problem!

Good advice from Billie. I think the sleeping giant is under-employment. The regime of short term contracts works as a penalty for older workers. Life becomes a treadmill of trudging from one interview to another - or facing no acknowledgement when they apply on line.

Quite right to call for more media on this issue as it has national social and economic ramifications. Age prejudice is insidious because it's hard to prove. Employers can say, 'we just had a better candidate'. That's sure to be true in some cases but King's article tends to lift the lid on the lie. Some hard facts would be handy although the stories on this post are evidence.

This is an intelligent factual article on the real situation regarding the employment of older Australians. Makes a change from the usual government spin.

This problem of an aging population is really not the fault of the portion of the baby boomers who are now in the 55-60year age group. They have a fairly big demographic of workers under them. It is the 30 and 40year olds who havent had children or have left it until their late thirties to have children who are going to have a real problem with no taxpayer base(workers)under them. Most of those in the 55-60year age group will be dead within 20years.

We don’t ALL ? live until we are 80years. That’s a maximum not an average. More spin by governments and superannuations funds. The average is still around 73years for women and 67 for men. Some live 10 or 15 years more than the average but a lot die 10or more years earlier than the average too. I think funeral statistics would bear this out. Preferably statistics done by people who can present facts and not spin.

SHOCK!HORROR! this isnt what society wants to hear is it? We all like to buy into the idea that we will live to 80years or more don’t we.

I often see people in the financial advice columns who have $500.000 dollars in super who are 62years old and still working, because they think they will live until they are 80or 90. I see people in my own community with money who do this too, and the next minute they get cancer or drop dead from a heart attack. They could have paid themselves a wage of $50.000 for the next 10years and retired. Once you reach 70years you can kiss the ground every day you wake up alive because you just don’t know when your time will be up.

Malcolm says that - "One has to wonder about the existence of age prejudice in the 21st century."

Mankind has this idea that they can intellectualize and legislate away man's basic biological programming and they are surprised when it doesn't work like they thought it would. It is the way of every species to abandon the old and the sick when times are hard. The young are always climbing up behind, chanllenging the territorial control of the old and the old eventually have to give way to them.

There are 2 parts to this debate

1. the difficulty the older job candidate has finding work

2. the push to keep the workforce participation rate above 65% for people over 40.

When I was at school we assumed that mechanisation would mean that work was less hard - yes physically demanding work has almost been eliminated, and we would have more leisure - work less than 38 hours a week and retire from the workforce at 55.

The Australian Financial Review is full of articles saying that the older worker would like to restrict their work to about 40 hours a week and suggestions that 70 is the right age to retire.

As KeesB and I can attest that means a lot of low self esteem individuals scrabbling for their next contract - with worse conditions than the last contract.

Suitability of older workers to do the job? Most jobs are designed to be done by younger bodies - so older workers on production lines end up with chronic shoulder or lower back complaints, office lighting needs to be increased for older workers as their reading glasses need more light, documents must be printed in 12+ point to be legible. There is no question that older workers suffer from more chronic complaints than younger workers and older workers would be more interested in part time work.

As rehctub says social security recipients are penalised for accepting part time [or seasonal] work so its easier to not do any work.

Governments could improve labour mobility for older workers by
* introducing the superannuation contribution clearing house - as promised in 2007 election
* change the mechanism for social security recipients to top up their payments without harsh penalties for miscalculation of estimated earnings - encourage reporting of actual earnings

A good post and most comments are on the money.

However, let us consider some other aspects.

Older workers with relevant education are not overpriced as they are generally prepared to give a seniors discount for their labour and wisdom. They do not demand top market rates when asked.

Business has shed responsibility for spending on staff training.

Australia is to suffer as long as 457 visas are issued at an employer's whim. Every 457 visa issued REDUCES business's desire to spend on education of employees. Unions used to know this and force apprentices to be employed.

Not so now at either end of the age spectrum.

Business should pay an education tax on every 457 visa they import.

On the other hand the arguments as to the cost of social welfare called pensions is a smokescreen to cover the welfare payments in family tax benefits and youth education at the other end of the age spectrum - do a comparison and it becomes obvious that Big Business has shed its cost for education off to Government and families. We have been returned to a role of serfs.

Alas, even the pollies are manufactured agents at the ultimate command of the Big Four.

There is no loyalty even to manufactured agents.

A very insightful article DICKO, What you say

A very insightful comment DICKO, coudn't be more accurate.

(sorry about the above post pressed the wrong key before I was ready)

Great article - very important and timely.

Ageing sux in so many ways.

I think industry likes having a pool of
unemployed people. It means more people
competing for each job, and that means the
company can hire the cheapest candidate.

However, just looking beyond the ice-berg -
at society as a whole. What sort of a community
have we become when people are only valued as
units of production or consumption.

I am in very good employment and I engage
in a modest bit of private industry as well;
I pay a fair whack in taxes. I would gladly
GLADLY pay more if that's what is needed to
maintain people who cannot work in a fashion
that allows them to live with a modicum of
dignity.

The way people who aren't employed are being
blamed and harrassed makes me sick - shame on
the lucky country for letting them down - no
matter what their age.

Australia's superannuation system discourages employment of mature workers so older job seekers are usually only offered casual work and a life of poverty.

Lesley Parker said http://www.smh.com.au/news/planning/youre-on-your-own/2008/08/25/1219516368481.html

With one in four Australians now for all intents and purposes a temporary worker, the [recent layoffs are] a sharp reminder for many about the financial perils of being a casual, a contractor or self-employed.

The latest National Australia Bank survey has business confidence at its lowest ebb since the early 1990s recession, while the Reserve Bank is forecasting economic growth of just 2 per cent this calendar year - a sharp decline from the 4 per cent-plus annual pace of just a year ago.

The Reserve, though it hasn't put a precise figure on it, is also saying unemployment will rise.

If you're an employee and you lose your job, your entitlements will depend on the redundancy provisions in your employment contract or industrial award and on the minimum standards prescribed in state and federal legislation.

If you're a casual or a contractor and the tap is turned off, there'll be little or no notice and no redundancy payout.

For such people, job security lasts only as long as the next pay packet or invoice. Their unpredictable income makes it hard to save, they don't have entitlements such as sick leave and holiday pay. [Casuals find it harder to get mortgage loans and accumulate super].

"For many casuals there are quite big fluctuations over the week, over the month and over the year."

Dun & Bradstreet says the two segments [in financial stress], according to its debt-referrals data, are micro-businesses - defined as having five employees or fewer, often self-employed "sole traders" - and the 18-to-34 age group, which includes many casuals.

Right on Billie re casuals. temps, self-employed.

I believe that the value of 'experience' magically starts to reverse in the workplace in the mid 40s-mid 50s. Once you were a guru and five years on, you're 'past it'. That's an exageration but I think it's true. It's weird as one would expect more experience (minus intractable opinions, etc) would be a major asset for a business. It's not for many.

The hiring and firing procedures in many organisations are positively feudal. King has hit the nail on the head attacking 'organisational fit'. Clearly a case of voodoo HR. What kind of tribal/magical thinking pits one person against another trying to suit 'organisational fit'? Many employers cant define their terms in this area let alone explain it.

Age prejudice is alive and well.

Hi, my mum is 70.5 yrs old, she went to uni at 48 yrs to study nursing, she has been a registered nurse since she was 52 yrs and has worked since. I keep saying 'my god woman' when can you take time off to baby sit my kids, Only joking (sort of). She recently worked 11 shifts/days out of 13 at 70, areas of mental health and general nursing. I think it's great. I'm now 46 and just started my first degree in arts/law, so I hope you're wrong and I get work with reasonably ease or else the gov. wont be getting the uni fees back. I think it's down to the 'we will not be beaten' attitude and don't forget 'where this is a will there's a way'.