Age discrimination is still a real problem, and it's worst for women

Mar 21, 2017

A resident holds the hand of a nurse at the SenVital elderly home in Kleinmachnow outside Berlin May 28, 2013. Facing an acute shortage of skilled applicants among its own workforce, German institutions in the care sector increasingly turn to southern European countries to hire trained nursing staff who are willing to work abroad despite the language barrier in order to escape unemployment at home. The SenVital home for the elderly outside Berlin has accepted five qualified nurses from Spain as their staff, providing eight months of language training and additional care schooling needed to attain the German nursing concession. Some 100 Spaniards applied for the ten vacancies SenVital had advertised across its various houses. REUTERS/Thomas Peter (GERMANY - Tags: HEALTH BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT) - RTX103ZD

A report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found discernible and systematic patterns of age discrimination, particularly for women. Image: REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Pedro Nicolaci da Costa

Editorial Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Future of Work is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Future of Work

Comparison of job applicant callback rates by age

Image: Business Insider

Projection of U.S working-age population by age group

Image: U.S Census Bureau

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.