Today’s job seekers are faced with a stalling market amid a rising national unemployment rate. Now, add age discrimination to the mix. Older adults may experience age-related biases that even further complicate their ability to land a new job.
The Jewish Council for the Aging provides free virtual employment expos for job seekers age 50 and older in Maryland and Virginia to help remedy this issue.
Expos generally run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with skills training in the morning — updating one’s LinkedIn profile, preparing for a job interview and applying for jobs online — and breakout sessions with “age-friendly” hiring employers in the afternoon.
Shane Rock, JCA’s CEO, estimated that about 350 job seekers attended each expo a year ago. That number is now around 600.
“It’s almost doubled,” Rock said. “It’s been a dramatic increase.”
He cited the changes in the federal government and an overall “tightening of the [United States] job market.”
Only 22,000 jobs were added in August, markedly lower than the expected 76,500 new roles. The national unemployment rate rose to 4.3% — the last time it was this high was in fall 2021, when the U.S. economy was recovering from the effects of the pandemic.
The job search for older Americans is exacerbated by additional barriers: age bias and discrimination.
“Some employers may have some hesitancy in hiring older adults because they believe in certain stereotypes associated with aging, such as concern about whether they have the technical skills to perform certain jobs,” Rock said.
Rather than focus on their perceived shortcomings, Rock and JCA aim to highlight the strengths that older job seekers bring to the table.
“Most everyone has skills and talents and experience that they can bring to others,” Rock said. “They may come to us with a need, but we’re looking to build upon what makes them unique and [what they’re] still contributing to the community.”
He noted that most of the participating employers find that older adults “come with all kinds of experience and skills.”
“When we have 600 people attending an expo, [it] can range from people who haven’t had a job in a while to people who had a high-level job in the federal government or other businesses who are looking to change careers or change positions,” Rock said. “It’s a wide range of skills, and we try to make that clear to prospective employers that they shouldn’t judge based on age; they should judge based upon the qualifications of the individual.”
JCA’s expos allow for exposure to hiring employers. During the afternoon portion of the expo, job seekers meet the employers and can exchange contact information. “It starts to build those relationships for that move towards interviews or screening for jobs,” Rock said.
JCA offers 10 expos per year: six based in Montgomery County, three in northern Virginia and one in Howard County. Meeting the increased demand by hosting more employment expos isn’t feasible for JCA, Rock said.
“Just in terms of staffing and ability to organize them, they take a fair amount of work,” Rock said. “We’re kind of at our maximum right at the moment.”
The current job market makes it difficult for JCA to bring in many employers for the breakout sessions, coupled with the fact that JCA doesn’t turn any participant away from employment expos.
“Logistically, it becomes more challenging in terms of connecting the employers directly with the job seekers when [attendance] grows really, really huge,” he said. “The basic way we’re trying to approach it is to get as many employers who have openings available to join the expos.”
Just last year, Rock said JCA had to turn away or reschedule some employers due to lack of time. Each participating employer gets 10 to 15 minutes to present about their company. He can manage up to 16 or 17 employers per expo, but “once it gets more than that, it starts to make the expo extremely long.”
“This year, the number of employers who actually have openings is less,” Rock said.
Only 11 employers participated in the most recent expo on Sept. 16. The Trump administration is somewhat to blame, Rock said, adding that hiring managers within the federal government who once participated in the expos no longer do so after the 2024 election.
Another effort, JCA’s Senior Community Service Employment Program, which aims to provide job training for 55-plus low-income job seekers in Montgomery and Frederick counties, is on the rocks. The program is “mostly suspended” currently since the federal government hasn’t yet distributed the money necessary to keep it running, Rock said.
Helping this particular group of job seekers ties into Judaism, according to Rock.
“There’s a value in recognizing the beauty [and] the value of older adults,” he said. “We really take a person-centered approach, which I think very much comports with Jewish values.”
