Too Old at 30

Read this article and say what your reactions to it are.

I’m contemplating applying for my fifty-first job. It’s been a long time since I wasted stamp money this way. In fact, when I reached the fiftieth without success I decided to abandon job-hunting and got out my pen to scratch a living instead.

But there’s another wildly exciting job in the paper today, “salary £22,500 – £26,250 according to age and experience”. The good news is the pay, the bad news is that damning little phrase “according to age and experience” which means I won’t get the job.

It’s not that I have more age than experience – I’ve led an incident-packed existence. Unfortunately it’s not all related to a single-strand career structure. Journalist, temp, company director, wife and mother, market researcher, and now, at thirty-something, I’m trying to use my Cambridge degree in criminology.

I’m a victim of the sliding pay-scale. Employers can obtain a fresh 22-year-old graduate to train a lot cheaper than me. Yet I’m the ideal employee: stable, good-humoured, child-bearing behind me, looking for 25-plus years of steady pensionable employment.

Ageism is everywhere. It’s much more prevalent than sexism in the job market, or that’s how it seems from where I’m standing. Even the BBC is a culprit. Their appointments brochure says: “The BBC’s personnel policies are based on equal opportunities for all … This applies to … opportunity for training and promotion, irrespective of sex, marital status, creed, colour, race or ethnic origin, and the BBC is committed to the development and promotion of such equality of opportunity. Traineeships … are available to suitably qualified candidates under the age of 25.”

Ageism is lagging behind sexism, racism, and handicappism because even the oppressed seem to accept the discrimination. The public and private sectors are obsessed with attracting young high-flyers. Yet there are many professions that would benefit from the maturity and stability the older entrant can bring. This is recognized by the Probation Service, for example, who welcome experienced adults looking for a second career.

The armed services and police, perhaps, could think about strenuous aptitude and fitness tests rather than imposing a blanket upper limit on entrants which is arbitrarily and variously fixed between 28 and 33. The administrative grade of the Civil Service assumes the rot sets in at 32.

My own pressing concern is to alleviate my guilt. I loved every minute of my university education, and I’m desperately grateful to the Government for financing me through this at a cost of over £10,000. But unless someone gives me a job, how can I pay them back in income tax?

Jenny Ward