Solving Under-Employed Older Workers

4 causes holding back older workers:

1. physical requirements loosely counter-correlated with with aging
2. skills obsolete
3. depleted 'reputational concern', needed for hard-to-monitor tasks^
4. parent/child idiom/memes used in boss/worker relationship, with taboos interfering
5. taboo about discriminating against older workers prevents discussion of the above 4

^
Some definitions from economists:

• reputational concern: a way of saying 'future income at stake' and the more at stake, the more a worker fears losing their job and does the right thing even when not closely monitored. For example a 20-something will have 60-20 = 40 years x $40k /yr = $1.6M at stake and -all other things held constant- a 50-something has 10 years x $40k/yr = $400k at stake - a 4 fold difference in motivation

• efficient wages: wage premium above minimum wage voluntarily paid by employers so that workers will fear losing their jobs and do the right thing even when not closely monitored. This saves the employer money they would otherwise spend on monitoring, discipline and firing/hiring/retraining costs.
• monitoring: watching what the worker is doing, and inspecting the quality and quantity of their work
• self-monitoring: when a worker fears losing a good paying job or one that will lead to further good earnings in the future, they will monitor themselves to ensure work quality and quantity even when not monitored by employer

Parent/Child idiom and taboos:

• a relatively younger worker, acting as boss, may feel uncomfortable about giving direction, orders, monitoring, scolding someone who is relatively older due to taboos about speaking back to elders trained into people during their childhood, by 'authority figures' such as parents, schools and teachers
• a relatively older worker may struggle with feelings of humiliation taking orders from someone younger

Solutions:
1. physical requirements loosely counter-correlated with with aging ie bad left knee, can't kneel on bare floor
- workers communicate ailments so worst-case not assumed
- workers bring their own accommodating technology where needed ie knee-pad
- employers, knowing the ailments, can brainstorm and solve for accommodations

2. skills obsolete
- worker retraining as per various government and self-initiated training programs, on high demand skills
- training on general problem-solving techniques which are the most universally valued:
-- example: 4 step problem solving:

3. depleted reputational concern
- employers increase efficient wages with age, to compensate for lower reputational concern
- workers declare they will not be retiring soon - ie. will be working until age 85 - thereby increasing perceived reputational concern and its associated self-monitoring

4. parent/child idiom/memes used in boss/worker relationship, with taboos interfering
- training session where youth and older workers are mixed in sessions requiring the youth to give orders and the older workers to take the orders, thereby breaking the taboos for both groups, and reducing the problem from the employers (young boss) and under-employed older worker sides

5. taboo about discriminating against older workers prevents discussion of the above 4
- older workers themselves are allowed to address the issues without taboo, and so they should do so pro-actively in cover letters, and interviews