“Equivalent experience” tends to favor older job applicants

I don’t see this as favoring older job applicants necessarily. It does allow them to put in their resumes for consideration without violating the terms of the application requirements.

Older applicants also come with a higher risk that it will be hard to weed them out should their performance be “not up to standards,” which could mean anything from mediocre performance to the usual “not a team player” appellation, which is a euphemism for “insists on having a personal life” or “doesn’t submit quietly to whatever Dilbert-like depredations we feel like imposing on him/her.”

Again, this is not my experience in the workforce. I have a friend who has been with a family firm for a decade. She is in her fifties. The owner of the business retired as president and brought in “new young blood” to run the business. Since that time my friend has been micromanaged by a new level boss. By that I mean that her boss hired someone at a level in between him and her, creating a new level. She has been openly humiliated at work. She has been required to write memos outlining all she does - read that as creating a job manual for her successor.

If they fire her, there is not going to be a problem. My friend needs employment, so she is not going to sue the firm even though she has documented everything that has happened.

The experience is only the current example. It is only when the level of firing older workers rises to a level of blatancy and volume that companies are in peril if the so discriminate against a whole group of people. Even then, companies find a way to cover the bases.

“Equivalent experience” tends to favor older job applicants who, because of their experience, expect and deserve higher pay. Older applicants also come with a higher risk that it will be hard to weed them out should their performance be “not up to standards,” which could mean anything from mediocre performance to the usual “not a team player” appellation, which is a euphemism for “insists on having a personal life” or “doesn’t submit quietly to whatever Dilbert-like depredations we feel like imposing on him/her.” “College degree” without requisite experience clearly indicates an employer’s desire for younger employees with college loan burdens who will settle for less, not only in pay but in working conditions.