Age-biased language persists in job postings

Nothing in these phrases is automatically age-specific, but they can discourage older job seekers just the same. Despite efforts from some human resource departments to raise awareness about

why these buzzwords might be biased, recruiters still commonly use them, perhaps to make job opportunities sound exciting to younger candidates. "The typical unemployed older worker

has been on an extended job search and has sent out dozens of résumés or applied to lots of online jobs, only to hear nothing back,” says Laurie McCann, a senior attorney for AARP Foundation

who represents victims of age discrimination in court. "They're going to see some of those terms and decide they're not going to waste their time and energy to apply to a job

that's sending a clear signal: ‘We're not interested in older workers. We're looking for younger people and we don't think older workers fit into our culture here. So

stay away.'" Another potential code word for age bias: “digital native.” The phrase describes people who grew up using internet technology — anyone born in the 1980s or later,

essentially. People who learned how to use those technologies later in life are sometimes called “digital immigrants.” Of course, how old you were when you started using the internet or

smartphones is no indicator of how sharp your skills with those devices are today. For some employers, asking for candidates who are digital natives has become shorthand for asking for

younger applicants, advocates for older workers say. AARP found that “digital native” appears frequently in job postings. A search on one day in July found the phrase in 378 postings on

LinkedIn nationwide, 79 on Indeed and 111 on Monster. It often appears in postings for jobs in the technology industry, which has been criticized for showing bias against older workers.

"The issue with a lot of these terms is not necessarily in the use of the terms, but in how the employers are interpreting them,” Peeler says. “For example, an employer wants someone

who is ‘tech savvy.’ Well, you know, Bill Gates is 64 years old now, and would you say that he's not tech savvy? "Employers need to be careful about not making stereotyped

decisions based on age,” Peeler says. “If they need someone to use computers when they're saying that they should be tech savvy then they shouldn't look at how old someone is to

decide whether or not that's the case.” ORIGINS OF OLDER WORKER PROTECTIONS The powerful effects of the words employers use to advertise job openings is a main reason age discrimination

laws exist in the first place. In 1965, the bias against older job seekers was so blatant that 25 percent of jobs were closed to applicants age 45 and older, according to a Labor Department

report from that era. Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson took notice and enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which protects individuals age 40 and older from

discrimination in hiring, firing and all other terms and conditions of employment. Although employers have mostly stopped using explicit age restrictions when advertising job openings,

language that more subtly discriminates against older workers persists. Policing that language has proven difficult. The sheer number of active online job postings is in the millions, and

the EEOC would have to scrutinize them one at a time to see how specific phrases are used. For example, “recent college graduates” might be benign in a posting for a career counselor tasked

with helping “recent college graduates” find jobs. "We investigate the charges raised before us, which includes looking at the surrounding circumstances to determine the employer's

motive or the potential discriminatory effect of the employer's advertisement,” says the EEOC's Peeler. The agency can initiate investigations into discrimination in recruiting

and hiring, but most of the time that process begins with a complaint from a job seeker. If workers or their advocates don't file a formal complaint, the EEOC may be unlikely to notice

it. "We don't have many people coming to job advertisements, looking at these things and then deciding they want to aggressively pursue” an age bias charge, Peeler says.