Authors: Dr. Kai Brauer, Professorin Dr. Gertrud M. Backes, Professor Dr. Wolfgang Cle-mens
The raising of the retirement age aims at a compliance with the statutory goals regarding contribution rate and pension level against the background of the demographic development. However, these aims can only be reached if the labor participation of elderly persons (per-sons between 57 and 67) actually increases. At the same time, the modern labor markets are characterized by high qualification requirements and fluctuation within and between compa-nies, professions, and schemes and phases of gainful operation. Therefore, the crucial ques-tion is not only, if the labor market will provide the economic intake capacity for a growing number of elderly employments, but if a (re-)integration of elderly job-applicants is imagin-able and how staff selection processes will turn out to be.
The question was examined in a study about the practice of staff selection in German com-panies conducted by the Center of Aging and Society of the University of Vechta (“Zentrum Altern und Gesellschaft der Universität Vechta”) and by the Free University Berlin ("Freie Universität Berlin”) between 2006 and 2008. It became apparent that barriers regarding the physical work strain and organization are important but manageable. Structural barriers for elderly job applicants turned out to be more severe. Apparently, the “season of early retire-ment” led to a solidification of a crowding-out mentality. “Eldery” employees (sometimes even employees at the age of 40) are not supported and elderly job applicants (competing with younger job candidates) do not get a real chance for a re-entry. Forms of ageism hiding be-hind a thin façade of inculcated political correctness can often be proven. Ageism arises from, more or less, crude negative and positive stereotypes and can be discursively justified by different “practical constraints”. The article does not only intend to attest a broadly exclu-sion of elderly persons on the labor market, but to understand the different mechanisms that are responsible for the very limited market opportunities of elderly persons
