Stockholm University, Department of Business Studies, Nya Albano, Albanovägen 18, Sweden.
J Aging Stud. 2024 Dec;71:101281. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101281. Epub 2024 Nov 7.
Governments need individuals to be willing and able to work as they age. Yet, studies of older individuals' employability report that labor markets become more rather than less restrictive when it comes to employing older people. The Swedish labor market is a case in point. Recent surveys and governmental reports show that job seekers' employability begins to decrease when they are in their 40s. Through interviews with jobseekers, employer representatives, and human resources and recruitment specialists, the paper examines the employability of older individuals in Sweden. It focuses on knowledge-intensive service occupations, where seniority and age may be considered strengths rather than mere liabilities. It shows that individuals who are proactive about their professional development and strive to 'age well' are still excluded from recruitment processes because of their age. Yet, they are not excluded due to ageism in the form of negative prejudice against older job seekers. Rather, they are excluded because employers and recruiters perceive them as being too focused on professional development and lacking the naïve, 'just-do-it' mentality of younger job seekers. Furthermore, their professionalism and experience are viewed as factors that make them stand out as potential threats to the managerial hierarchy. Using a governmentality lens, the study contributes to critical research on the intersection of successful aging and employability discourses by addressing a question this research raises but has left unanswered: why are younger job seekers sometimes preferred over older ones, even when employers know they are less skilled, less experienced, and not as proactive or eager to develop professionally? The analysis reveals a rift in the ableism reinforced by the neoliberal discourses on successful aging and employability. While they explicitly emphasize self-governance and proactivity, they implicitly build on individuals' subjection to hierarchical control. The older job seekers match the explicit precepts of the neoliberal discourses yet are excluded because they fail to match the implicit ones. The analysis, therefore, suggests that age is the factor revealing this divide within neoliberal governmentality.
政府需要人们愿意并能够随着年龄的增长而工作。然而，研究表明，在雇佣老年人方面，劳动力市场变得更加限制，而不是更加宽松。瑞典劳动力市场就是一个很好的例子。最近的调查和政府报告显示，求职者的就业能力在 40 多岁时开始下降。本文通过对求职者、雇主代表、人力资源和招聘专家的采访，考察了瑞典老年人的就业能力。它专注于知识密集型服务行业，在这些行业中，资历和年龄可能被视为优势，而不仅仅是劣势。研究表明，那些积极主动地进行职业发展并努力“健康老龄化”的人仍然会因为年龄而被排除在招聘过程之外。然而，他们并不是因为对老年求职者的负面偏见而被排除在外，而是因为雇主和招聘人员认为他们过于专注于职业发展，缺乏年轻求职者的天真、“只管做”的心态。此外，他们的专业精神和经验被视为使他们成为管理层潜在威胁的因素。该研究使用治理视角，通过解决这一研究提出但尚未回答的问题，为成功老龄化和就业能力话语的交叉研究做出了贡献：为什么有时雇主更喜欢年轻的求职者而不是年长的求职者，即使他们知道后者技能较差、经验较少，也不太积极或渴望发展职业？分析揭示了成功老龄化和就业能力的新自由主义话语所强化的能力主义的裂痕。虽然这些话语明确强调自我管理和积极性，但它们隐含地建立在个人对等级控制的服从之上。年长的求职者符合新自由主义话语的明确规定，但却被排除在外，因为他们不符合隐含的规定。因此，分析表明，年龄是揭示新自由主义治理内部这种分歧的因素。
