Too Old to Work? Ageism in the Spanish Labor Market and the Nonsense Surrounding It

I graduated at one of the worst possible times: the year 2008, with rising unemployment, people being laid off but no one hiring. I kept my job as a shop assistant, but I was growing more and more desperate at not finding a job “in my field,” what I had studied for during what felt like an endless amount of time. I sent résumés to companies, handed them out in person (those were different times), and no one responded. I sent my CV to the most random places. At one of those public employment support services, I remember the woman who attended me said I “should lower my expectations.” Basically, she told me I had to suck it up because I was too young. After years of juggling work, university, internships, distance courses and occasional jobs, that made me feel awful. I had given up weekends, hadn’t taken vacations, and now someone told me that none of that mattered—because I was expected to have a different age, a different experience. I hated that woman as much as I felt sad (and defeated).

I kept studying and found other jobs—poorly paid, under the table, but in research. They were “in my field,” although the working conditions at the time were awful. In different meetings with public administration staff, they referenced my age as an excuse not to give me responsibilities or to limit my access to information. I kept studying. One of the courses I took (free, funded by the Employment Service) was to become an Employment and Local Development Agent; the teacher was wonderful, and so were my classmates. I was again one of the youngest there.

I remember one story that struck me: one of the classmates had been referred by the unemployment office. They had told her that, being a woman and 45 years old, she was in a situation of exclusion in terms of employment. That stuck with me because, even though I felt there was a huge age difference between her and me, I couldn’t understand how someone could be considered old to work at 45. I, at 23 or 24, was too young; she, at 45, was too old. After losing her previous job (a horrible case of workplace harassment), it was very difficult for her to be hired again. So then, what was the ideal age to work?

When we talk about discrimination in the labor market, we usually think of gender, origin, or even sexual orientation. But age discrimination tends to go more unnoticed; maybe because it’s more normalized, more accepted. Paradoxically, in a country that is aging rapidly and where we’re asked to work more years, labor ageism is not just an individual injustice: it’s a collective, economic, and social problem. It is, forgive me, absolute nonsense—contradictory and even malevolent.

Not long ago, I read a study by the ISEAK Institute, titled “Too Old to Work? Evidence from a Field Experiment on Ageism in the Spanish Labor Market” (2024), which deals with this topic, and I thought it could help shed light on this issue that I’ve discussed before from a more qualitative, real-life-experience-based perspective (as I’m doing here). For this report, they conducted a field experiment using a technique that involves sending thousands of fictitious résumés to real job offers to see whether the supposed age of the candidate influenced the likelihood of getting a callback. It’s not a new experiment (similar ones have been done on gender, origin, or skin color, especially in the U.S.), but the focus on age is definitely relevant to us.

The results were clear and not at all surprising for readers of this blog: people over the age of 55 had on average, a 35% lower chance of getting a callback than someone aged 30 with the same qualifications. With the same experience, education, and motivation, being older penalizes. And it penalizes a lot. It turns out that something as innocent and “normal” as living (the alternative being death) is frowned upon in some spaces. Lovely.

Let me tell you a bit more about the experiment (so I’m not the only one getting worked up). The design of the experiment included sending over 3,600 résumés to 1,200 real job offers, always in pairs: two profiles with the same experience, education, gender, etc., but different ages (30, 47, and 55). This way, any difference in responses could only be attributed to age.

The job postings came from a variety of sectors: administration, sales, cleaning, customer service… and were for real jobs—precarious in many cases, but real all the same. The results were clear: 55-year-olds were rejected because of their age. Even more: the study showed that this discrimination is greater in lower-skilled sectors, where (at least in theory) experience could be more valued. But no. In these cases, age is seen as a burden, not as an asset.

I said earlier that this seemed like nonsense to me—nonsensical, contradictory, even cruel. Why? In a context where the legal retirement age has been pushed back to 67 (Pensions System Reform, Law 27/2011), how on earth will it be possible to achieve such a feat when people are already being blocked from the labor market at 45 or 50? Are the work contributions—that sustain the pension system—of 52-year-olds worth less than those of 28-year-olds?

From the Europe 2020 Strategy to the European Commission’s Green Paper on Aging (2021), and the Council of the EU’s Framework for Action on Active Aging and Demographic Change (2012), there has been a consistent call for older people to remain active in the labor force for longer. But then the uncomfortable question arises: what happens when the labor market doesn’t support those goals? What’s the point of asking people to work longer if, at the same time, they’re being excluded—from much younger ages—from recruitment processes?

According to Eurostat, Spain has one of the lowest employment rates in the EU for people aged 55 to 64. I’ve often (very often) heard it said that this is due to personal choice—that they don’t want to work. Really? This tired argument seems to forget that more than half of unemployed people over 55 have been job-hunting for over a year. We don’t have much data, but according to the Observatory on Ageism and Employment (Adecco Foundation, 2023), 40% of unemployed people over 50 say they’ve suffered age discrimination.

As the ISEAK report itself points out, combating ageism requires both evidence and political will and social commitment. And also, something as basic as looking around and asking ourselves what role we give to older people in our companies, in our discourse, in our visions of the future.

We need to include explicit anti-ageism criteria in active employment policies and anti-discrimination labor laws, as well as develop incentives for workplaces to be truly intergenerational and allow for knowledge transfer between generations. We also need something deeper: to change the narrative. To stop talking about “burden” or “obsolescence” when referring to people and start recognizing that experience is an added value—and that using it in companies can be a form of innovation.

We may not have all the answers, but it’s about time we started asking the right questions.

In this sense, let me end by reminding you that a dignified old age begins with labor rights throughout life. Good aging shouldn’t begin to be considered or shaped in advanced years—it is the result of a lifetime. But above all, it is a social achievement. A dignified old age includes the possibility of continuing to participate—if one so chooses—in working life, without arbitrary barriers. Aging does not make us obsolete “products.”