The juniorization of the American workforce

A friend of mine, Tom, recently commented on this obvious trend. At age 51, Tom works as an IT consultant (1099 form) for a new medtech company. Tom recently shared that he had just returned from a meeting with his friends from high school. Many of the people Tom referenced had been in leadership positions at large companies and had followed long and distinguished career paths to achieve their career goals. So, Tom saw more than coincidence that the only people currently employed among his friends were those who were self-employed or owned their own businesses. All of the individuals in Tom’s group who had risen through the ranks of corporate America were now “displaced due to circumstance.” You don’t have to look far to see this phenomenon infiltrating the lives of an entire generation.

The contemporary application of the noun “juniorization” refers to the “elephant in the room”. It is now the common practice to “displace” senior employees who “don’t have as much track left.” This is HR lingo for an illegal practice of age discrimination through a strategic deployment of streamlined hiring, forced retirement, displacement, and firing.

Just because there hasn’t been (yet) a spate of age discrimination lawsuits, doesn’t mean the problem hasn’t reached a state of crisis. It just means that these illegal practices are difficult to prove. Departing employees are extorted severance packages that have been significantly evaluated in terms of tax financial savings for the company. Either you sign, agree to keep your mouth shut and accept what is offered to you, or you take the initiative and face a long and expensive litigation process.

Even as you read this article; HR teams are working feverishly to prove that they are not employing juniorization practices. They will publish lists of displaced employees that illustrate the age diversity of people about to join the ranks of the unemployed. However, there is a strong possibility that the company will turn around and rehire younger staff in newly defined positions, or replace displaced senior staff with “more economically favorable” options, including outside “1099 consultants,” and fewer employees. experienced and cheaper. .

Hiring managers are strongly discouraged from recruiting teams of seniors, even when the senior employee candidate has a particularly strong track record as a leader or as an innovator.

There’s no denying that senior employees may not be as technically up-to-date as their young rising star counterparts. But, that is not an acceptable (or legal) reason to put them out to pasture. They still have a lot to offer in terms of historical knowledge* and leadership** (more on that in a minute).

An interesting analogy can be drawn from the definition of juniorization provided on the ‘BrickWiki’ website, which is a wiki intended to cover all aspects of what will become known as the LEGO hobby. ‘BrickWiki defines juniorization as:

“A term used by adult LEGO fans[AFOLs]to describe and criticize the inclusion of some highly specialized items in sets instead of already existing items that could be assembled in the same configuration. Un BURP (Big Ugly Rock Piece) podría ser considerado un elemento juniorizado pero es más común referirse a piezas como que es simplemente un elemento que reproduce cinco de apiladas juntas”.[AFOLs)tobothdescribeandcriticizetheinclusionofafewhighlyspecializedelementsinsetsinsteadofalreadyexistingelementsthatcouldbeassembledintothesameconfigurationABURP(BigUglyRockPiece)mightbeconsideredajuniorizedelementbutitismorecommontorefertopiecessuchaswhichissimplyanelementthatreproducesfiveofstackedtogether”[AFOLs)tobothdescribeandcriticizetheinclusionofafewhighlyspecializedelementsinsetsinsteadofalreadyexistingelementsthatcouldbeassembledintothesameconfigurationABURP(BigUglyRockPiece)mightbeconsideredajuniorizedelementbutitismorecommontorefertopiecessuchaswhichissimplyanelementthatreproducesfiveofstackedtogether”

‘BrickWiki continues: “The main complaint is that the use of junior parts reduces the chances of building alternative models, a cornerstone of AFOL activity.”

So, as the Lego analogy portrays: Companies are laying off senior employees who have finely honed specialized skill sets, and replacing them with cheaper, younger employees who have less evolved, but more diverse skills. As discussed in Lego World, the employment of less skilled and less senior employees will eventually result in long-term organizational deficiencies in flexibility and adaptability.

*Historical knowledge is something that those who use juniorization processes are not assessing. They are willing to give up years of experience for short-term savings.

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

•Edmund Burke

**Leadership is not a talent that can be taught in graduate school. It is a set of acquired skills. And guess what. Not everyone has a propensity for leadership. That’s why it takes years and years to vet good leaders. So throwing less experienced employees into the management group to see who goes under is not the best leadership development process. It will result in the loss of valuable talent due to burnout and frustration.

The term juniorization is not new. In an October 2004 article in the Columbia Journalism Review (“Letter From Johannesburg: The Trouble with Transformation” by Douglas Foster in Cape Town, South Africa), the term was credited to the online source: Double-Tongued Dictionary as:

n.- The survey generated a terrible new word: juniorization. It covers a multitude of sins. When the most experienced reporters left the profession because they were traumatized by covering the political violence that plagued the country in the 1980s, or crime or AIDS in the 1990s; when talented reporters are kidnapped by the government or corporations for double their salaries as mobsters; when someone is promoted beyond their abilities, and even when a reporter gets a story wrong, “juniorization” is the one-size-fits-all label used to shame newsroom denizens without explicitly mentioning that most the “young” are black”.

So the term juniorization has long had a negative connotation. However, the contemporary problem in question threatens an aging population that is already struggling to establish retirement plans without the promise of social security subsidies.

A recent blog post on theSkimm defined the term juniorization like: “The term for your office happy hours getting louder and louder. It’s when a company lays off older employees to replace them with younger ones. Because 40 is the new 30 is the new 25.” The new ones are not so legal?

In Skimm’s coverage, they referenced a Business Insider article titled Wall Street Is Trapped By Something Called ‘Juniorization,’ And It’s Scaring Some People in which they cited the practice of firing senior traders and salespeople and replacing them with talent. younger. main cause for concern. But, this trend that has been recognized in the world of financial services is not limited to that sector.

None of this is intended to place all the blame for these juniorization practices on Human Relations professionals. Obviously, these directives come from a higher level. But, the level of complicity that the human resources people are exercising is incredible. They’re smiling on employees’ faces and kicking their butts on the way out the door.

The working days for a corporation throughout its entire career are at the endangered level on the extinction scale. But, don’t show me a rat and call it a puppy. You may be “just following orders” (think war crimes trials), but don’t tell us you’re making fair and non-discriminatory business decisions. Because we’re not that stupid.