brown bag Travail et Économie Publique

Du 18/07/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30

PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

ANDREESCU Marie (PSE)

Skill obsolescence in senior workers. Evidence from an audit study

Age is the main criterion of discrimination on the labor market in France. This paper analyzes the main obstacles that senior workers face on the labor market and explores the pre-emptive policies that can be put in place to mitigate their effect. Only 57% of workers are still employed after their 55th anniversary. Three objective reasons for the insufficient employment rate of workers above 55 years old have been identified in literature. On the supply side, older job-seekers are less likely to be as active in their searching behavior as their younger counterparts. On the demand side, employers often complain about the higher cost of recruiting a more experienced worker and about the physical limitations of the latter. However, insufficient attention has been paid to subjective perceptions of age. The discriminative distaste of employers for older workers remains the main cause of premature forced retirement. We break-down this age discrimination into four main mechanisms: the perception of time until retirement, the acquisition of excessively specific human capital, the obsolescence of skills and the residual subjective preference for youth. This study offers the first experiential quantification of these effects. We run a large-scale correspondence study, sending fictitious CVs of senior workers to over 1000 companies that offer white collared-jobs. We present the first results of our study as well as prospective evolution of the protocol.