While statistics suggest workforce participation in the 45–54 age group has been slowly climbing, employment industry experts warn too many mature-aged jobseekers are being shut out.

Experts said in some cases the rates may be attributed to the earlier portion of a person's working life having been spent in the same job, leading to dated qualifications, or perhaps having raised a family, but too often it was because of long-standing prejudices toward older workers.

In some cases, employers and managers did not see that mature-aged workers were as physically or technically able to adapt to change as younger workers — a perception not supported by research.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics and government data, workforce participation in the 45–54 age group has been slowly climbing since the late 1970s, from about 70 per cent to above 80 per cent in 2018.

The 55–64 age group rose from almost 40 per cent to 66 per cent over the same period.

As of February, Australia was home to 2.9 million Australians aged between 45 and 64, and in March 180,500 of them were unemployed (6.22 per cent).

However, jobseekers, employment agencies and the national social service body say hunting for a job over the age of 45 is rife with hardship and discrimination.

'Starting from nothing'

Former nurse Becca Marie, 57, from Geelong, said she has been on the receiving end of such discrimination.

"Since the time I gave up nursing I've had trouble trying to get work," she said.

"Especially last year, when I was really trying, I knew that I was going to bottom-out and have no money at all."

Ms Marie is doing a Certificate III in Business Administration to update her software skills to land a data entry job.

"I've actually lost everything so I'm basically starting from nothing," she said.

Prejudices 'too longstanding'

According to employment agency, Matchworks, the over-45 age group has one of the toughest times getting work.

Executive general manager, Renee Lowry, says this is because there is still a lot of prejudice towards Australia's older job hunters.

"I don't really understand when we see people who are over the age of 60 and still have five years of employment, at least, left in them, often more — and the average day in work coming down — why employers wouldn't say all workers are a good option," she said.

She said mature-aged jobseekers were well-placed to upskill in caring roles in aged care or disability support and could meet the growth of the NDIS.

Sexes differ in experiences

Gender and employment relations researcher at the University of Sydney, Marian Baird, said there was a perception in Australian workplaces that the physical capabilities, skills and abilities of mature-aged jobseekers were inferior to those of younger people.

"There is a perception that older people — older workers in general — are not as physically able, or technically able to adapt to change and our research shows that this is not the case," she said.

Professor Baird said those perceptions about mature-aged people were not only confined to the employment queue.

"So, older men who feel that there is more age bias against them than older women, who don't feel that there is a bias against them."

Professor Bair said women tended to experience work in a much more positive fashion as they got older.

"One of the issues could be that women tend to have had many more career break prior to the age of 45, usually for childbearing and caring for children, so that they're entering the sort of positive period of a work life when they're older," she said.

"And many women, of course, are in professional jobs or semi-professional jobs where age-based attitudes and discrimination may not be so prevalent for men.

"And that could be an industry effect, that the industries they work in do favour younger people, maybe more manual skills and a different type of work experience."

Professor Baird's December 2019 research showed Australian workplaces were not meeting the training and development opportunities that mature workers yearned for.

"And one of the areas that we think Australian workplaces would really benefit from is more attention to knowledge transfer and integrating the knowledge of old workers with that of younger workers."

Mature jobseekers face 'many barriers'

Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) senior advisor for social security, Charmaine Crow, said many older Australians had to deal with the added pressures of a mortgage, a family, sometimes disability and illness, as they looked for work.

"Because it just means that the group is going to spend a longer period of time without a job."

However, she said, ACOSS welcomed the Government's increased JobSeeker payment, saying it would put mature-aged jobseekers in a better position, with less stress, to look for work.

Federal Minister for Employment, Skills and Small and Family Business, Michaelia Cash, also last week announced $41.7 million for the Career Transition Program to help mature jobseekers improve their digital literacy and transferrable skills.

Competing with younger jobseekers

Ms Marie was a nurse up until 2010 before taking time out to have a hysterectomy.

She was unable to go back to nursing and has been unemployed for nine years, picking up jobs in-between to get by.

Ms Marie has been six months in rent arrears, has sold her belongings to buy food and started on Centrelink payments in December after trying for five months.

"If I'd have been still working as a nurse and had a mortgage, I think I would have been really upset, but I wasn't in that situation," she said.

Ms Marie moved around regional Victoria, to towns including Shepparton, Benalla and Bendigo, to try and find work and has now started competing against younger jobseekers for the same jobs.

However, perhaps relying on the kind of resilience older workers were often credited with, Ms Marie said she remained determined to find work.