Has the Law Evolved Enough To Combat Pervasive Age Discrimination?

Activist organizations have been hard at work studying the pervasiveness of age discrimination in corporate America and have noted the difficult legal standards to prove it, which leave many workers without options in the workplace after a certain age. While #MeToo has become a large focus in corporate America, the law surrounding age discrimination and the hurdles to litigation are largely ignored. The issue is of particular importance as employees are living longer and choose or need to work later in life, rather than having the means to retire with a sizeable pension. The realities of age discrimination are a real concern for all races and genders in the workforce as they plan their careers and are sometimes illegally forced to leave a company due to age discrimination.

Ageism is a worldwide problem that can affect the employment status of older workers. The issue has garnered the attention of the World Health Organization (WHO), an organization that has noted in relation to their upcoming study on ageism that age discrimination is "an incredibly prevalent and insidious problem." Paula Spain, Ageism: A 'Prevalent and Insidious' Health Threat, New York Times (April 26, 2019). Further, "unlike other forms of discrimination … [it] is socially accepted and usually unchallenged, because of its largely implicit and subconscious nature." Alana Officer and Vânia de la Fuente-Núñez, A global campaign to combat ageism, World Health Organization (March 9, 2018). A full report on WHO's findings is anticipated in 2020.

In June 2018, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a study for the 50th anniversary of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which tracked the growth of older workers in the workforce with significant concerns about an aging population in the United States. Victoria A. Lipnic, The State of Age Discrimination and Older Workers in the U.S.; 50 Years After the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), EEOC (June 2018). According to the EEOC study, the last 25 years have brought about the most dramatic changes in the age of the nation's workforce with the number of workers age 55 and older in the workplace almost doubling in amount. Id. Per the report, the oldest population of "age 65+ workers" is only rising with a projected growth of "75 percent by 2050, while the group of workers age 25 to 54 is only expected to grow by 2 percent over this same period." Id. Not surprisingly, a large part of the projected change is female workers who are staying in or re-joining the workforce in record numbers with women "55 and older" comprising "over 25 percent of the women's labor force by 2024, which is almost double their share from 2000." Id.