Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Age discrimination most definitely occurs in the States, but of course most companies do not admit to it: they instead build this implicitly into job requirements: eg you need so many years experience (excluding younger workers), but need to be able to ultimately advance to a much higher level (excluding older workers who can not possibly achieve this before retirement), so an analysis of job postings could help you identify these factors. Interestingly, some other countries are much more open and direct in discrimination: eg in Turkey it is legal to specify you only want a woman between ages X and XX, or a man between ages Y and YY for a job. When confronted, the HR managers are not apologetic: they claim everyone/ every department has such requirements, and they would simply waste their own and the applicant's time if they would be less specific. If this argument is true for the US (i.e. there are similar requirements/age discrimination), employment data should reflect that the age distribution for a particular job is similar in the US and Turkey, despite the fact that the US job criteria are not explicit about age. Looks like an interesting dissertation topic!