In a nation where everything boils down to the bottom line someone need to point out the reality that has gone unnoticed about hopeless job seekers in their fifties and early sixties. Perhaps for politicians and the media the economic reality of employee health insurance pools cannot be mentioned but it's a fact that every time an older worker is turned away and that job is given to a younger worker the cost of the employee benefit package goes down for the entire company.
It goes beyond the biggest company savings, basic health care. When a company offers a prescription drug plan or a disability supplemental, the younger the cheaper. Even with life insurance and benefits to survivors, youth pays less. Perhaps it's not the only reason that so many Americans who make wonderful part-time Wal-Mart greeter are overqualified to work in the field where they once received great respect but a huge issue for the elder unemployed, no matter how large or small the company, the lower the age of the average worker, the lower the cost of health insurance.
Why is that particular reason never discussed? One of the most respected names in television news finished up a week long focus on unemployment with Brutal Job Search Reality for Older Americans Out of Work for Six Months or More. While framing the baby boomers as “Used Up,” Paul Solman seemed to search high and low but there was no mention of employers paying less for health care. The message I heard was "Old people just can't cut it anymore."
The PBS News Hour offered interviews with human resource managers with every possible excuse except health care cost. One of the elder long term unemployed mentioned that nobody in her company under the age of fifty was let go, so they went into fear of age discrimination lawsuits instead of cutting the bottom line.
Someone needs to get real here. There will never be a solution as long as the real issue is masked. Don't expect anything from politicians. Democrats already fixed health care and Republicans are still trying to sell "Obama the socialist" between Benghazi rants. In the broader media, just like the PBS “in depth” reporting, the once highly valued commodity of age and experience has been transformed to "old people are too ridged" and "the middle aged are slow learners."
The damage caused by this harmful frame, stereotyping a generation as over the hill, I'm middle aged and I've heard every other excuse so many times that I'm almost starting to believe that I no longer have anything to offer. I get to hear what young people are thinking about the near elderly every day, far worse and deteriorating rapidly since their experience with being older is what they are being told. It would be a stretch to claim that the news that the suicide rate of men between the age of 50 and 59 has recently shot up by almost fifty percent has any relation. But this constant negative and false message doesn't help matters.
This discrimination is an employer cost cutting measure. Just one of many undeniable and extremely painful facts of what passes for health care in America. Seldom mentioned and never addressed because both the politicians and the news media know who is buttering their bread. To them it's just a segment of a generation slammed in the downturn. People who spent their 401k's while pounding the pavement for new jobs and now with little time left to catch up in their working lives, the powers that be discuss cutting Social Security and Medicare instead.
The segment of the PBS NewsHour did end with a dose of reality, the fact that these millions of workers, well past young but not old enough to retire have become "part of a process that's declaring them hopeless."