Age Discrimination by Employers

In 1907, the editor of The New York Times wrote, "Employers, naturally, look to the young. A man or woman of advanced years is too apt to be given to old-fashioned ways of doing things, and open to suspicion of having the unforgivable fault, in modern business, of slowness." Age discrimination has existed throughout the 20th century, sometimes in the public eye and sometimes not. This book examines the problem as it relates to the employment sector in the United States throughout the century: how the issue has been treated by the media, what is the extent of age bias, how older workers were viewed, the reasons and rationales presented by business enterprises for their refusal to hire older workers, and the responses of governments to the problem. Some foreign data are used for comparison purposes; age bias exists in all industrial societies, regardless of the type of government a country provides for itself.