like the oscars, but for people hiring AGEISTs
We’ve featured plenty of people — chief among them our friends John Tarnoff and Chip Conley — who both advocate for and exhibit the benefits of a mixed-age workforce. So it’s nice to see, via a very good article in The New York Times, that things like the Age Smart Employer Awards not only exist, but are growing. The program, a project of the Columbia Aging Center at the university’s Mailman School of Public Health, is in its third year. And the number of companies meriting mention by showcasing their efforts to integrate and champion older workers has only increased. And it’s high time, especially considering this statistic: “Over the decade from 2014 to 2024, the labor force growth rate for 65- to 74-year-olds is expected to be about 4.5 percent annually, and about 6.4 percent annually for those 75 and older.” The story goes on to highlight a mechanic with back problems who gave up the shop floor to be retrained as an engineer at a Brooklyn-based manufacturer, and an age-agnostic apprenticeship military ship-building program at Huntington Ingalls Industries among several others. These forward-thinking approaches are greenshoots in the wasteland that is the job market after 50. We’d love to see more examples of them nationally.
