Age prejudice is like race prejudice. People’s judgements are skin deep.
Jacqueline Bradley describes feeling “demoralised, humiliated and … really quite embarrassed” about her failure to secure work after months of trying.
“A very good friend of mine said … he believed it may be my age,” the 61-year-old Tasmanian said. “I am not going to pretend to be who I am not. I have earnt every wrinkle and every grey hair on my head.”
“I am applying for call centre work, customer service, I can’t get any work in retail,” Ms Bradley said. “I keep failing, I’ve never had so many failures in my life.”
Ms Bradley has a background in customer service in real estate and car sales and has not been out of a job since she started working at 15.
In recent times she has begun training as a hotel receptionist.
“It’s really great, I love it,” she said. “I think there is an absolutely huge opportunity for retraining women my age.”
A National Skills Commission report found that older people had far greater difficulty finding subsequent employment after becoming unemployed compared with younger Australians.
In February 2020, mature age people were unemployed for an average of 76 weeks, compared with 33 weeks for young people and 54 weeks for people aged between 25 and 54 years.
The chief executive of Council on the Ageing Tasmania, Craig Chadwick, blames ageism for the difficulty older Australians face in securing work after the age of 55.
“One in six employers openly admit to a bias about age,” he said.
He said the perception that older workers were not as capable was wrong.
“People of that age are usually at the peak of their powers they usually have the highest level of qualification and experience and skills … their value is immense,” he said.