Workplace

last updated 8 January 2015

With competition for jobs tight, many older workers worry that their age will take them out of the running, said Susan Todd in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. “I don’t tell my age for fear of turning employers off,” says out-of-work sales executive Lou Capolino, 60. In an effort to improve their prospects, many are even “resorting to surgery to tighten jowls and erase wrinkles and frown lines wrought by age—and formerly demanding careers.”

Actually, younger workers may be no better off than “more-mature colleagues,” said Dana Mattioli in The Wall Street Journal. In this recession, younger workers are “shouldering a larger percentage of the burden”: The unemployment rate for workers ages 25 to 34 was 9.6 percent in April—versus 6.2 percent for those ages 55 and older. Although younger workers cost less to hire and retain, many companies are “wary” of laying off older workers for fear of lawsuits. “Still, there are ways younger workers can go about safeguarding their jobs.” The short answer, according to Bruce Tulgan, author of Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: Lose the attitude. “Come in early, stay late, dot your i’s and cross your t’s,” Tulgan recommends. Sound advice at any age.