A sea of gray

Imagine no entry-level jobs and a world with way more old people than young. How can a teen dream up a future?

The world is becoming gray topped. I go to a show or public lecture or panel discussion and I sit behind a sea of gray. I’m 63 and I often find myself one of the youngest people in the room.

All my life I have tried to support the struggle to get women and people of color in decision-making positions in corporations, government and organizations. There is still a long way to go on that but … no one talks about age diversity, or at least when they do they talk about discrimination against older people.

Now, 24 September is International Age Diversity Day, meant to bring awareness to age discrimination and the data that shows that having older people in the workforce improves productivity.

For a while, I chaired a department at a university and spearheaded hiring. I had to take training workshops on discrimination, including age discrimination, to make sure we didn’t turn experienced older people away just because of their age.

But that was before the world became gray heavy. According to a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people 65 or older eclipsed the number of people 5 or under for the first time.

Diverging demographics

People are living and working longer, as fewer people give birth. That means people stay in careers longer. Just look at the political world. Ed Markey, a man I interned for when I was 20 years old, when he was a congressman, just won the primary election in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and will likely win reelection to his U.S. Senate seat at age 80.

Meanwhile entry-level jobs of all kinds are evaporating as the government, corporations and organizations cede them to artificial intelligence.

Young people already face what is known as the “experience paradox.” Companies increasingly expect job applicants to have experience and advanced know-how to do a job. Soon there will be no on-the-job training at all. The tasks that new hires were given in the past to train them for higher roles are being taken over by AI.

There is an invisible cost to that. People who come with deep experience often lack the ability to see things from a fresh perspective. You end up improving existing systems but unable to see completely different scenarios. An organization ends up lacking the energy and passion that young people bring to any endeavor.

Meanwhile an entire population of people gets shut out of opportunities for advancement and becomes increasingly frustrated. This leads to social and political upheaval.

The disappearance of entry level

We are at the cusp of massive change caused by two things: A demographic shift from young to old and a technological shift that erases entry-level jobs.

We have to start thinking about age discrimination in a different light. Old people right now have all the power. They are in all the decision-making roles.

In a recent study by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, this year the average age of directors of the boards of companies on the S&P 500 — an index of 500 U.S. companies — was 60 and only 10% of all directors were under the age of 50. That percentage had fallen a percentage point from the previous year.

We are creating an age moat around companies and organizations that will result in an even more pronounced power imbalance of old people over young.

Let’s drop down a drawbridge for young people. Bring them on not just as entry-level trainees, but as entry-level leadership trainees. Create a place on the board for someone under the age of 35. Create internships and apprenticeships that pair young people with experienced professionals so that these young people can jump into the jobs that previously might have taken five years to rise to.

 A power shift

We need to seriously look around us in all facets of our world — in business, entertainment, government, education — and ask ourselves: Are we shutting young people out of this? And if so we need to ask why that is and how we can change that.

In June, we published an article by Sophie De Lavandeyra, a student at The Hewitt School in New York City, about how schools were enacting policies on mobile phone use without consulting with the students these policies would most affect. This is emblematic of the way almost all important policies are enacted.

We’ve written about how young people need to be listened to. But we — the people who hold positions of authority — need them to actively participate in the world and we need to make that participation inviting and rewarding and possible.

At News Decoder we want to do our part. So we are creating two new opportunities for students we work with. The first is a Student Leadership Board made up of high school students who can advise us on all the decisions we need to make and help shape the future of News Decoder. The second is a Student Correspondent Pool of young people around the world who can report on stories in their regions. In the past, if I had an idea as a news director I would send it to News Decoder’s professional correspondents, a pool of people made up of mostly older folks.

We want to also send these ideas for stories to our teen and university students for their fresh perspective.

It isn’t enough to listen to young people. We need to open up opportunities and give them a seat at the board of whatever organization we are talking about. We need for them to participate in decision making and interact with leaders, not just take orders from them.