Age continues to influence hiring, career development and promotions, even though it is not formally treated as a criterion in the assessment of candidates and employees. According to the HRM Institute report “(In)visible Employees 2026,” one in three workers has experienced age-based discrimination, while 40% have observed it in their workplace. On the one hand, the problem concerns ageism, meaning discrimination against older people. On the other, it involves adultism, which limits the opportunities available to the youngest candidates.
“(In)visible employees are two groups in our study. The first group consists of people aged 45–50+, that is, individuals who are already mature enough that some recruiters sometimes do not want to invite them for interviews. The second group is an emerging category of people under 30, meaning those who still do not have much experience after graduating from university. Unemployment in this group has recently risen sharply,” Anna Macnar, President of HRM Institute, said in an interview with Newseria.
The report “(In)visible Employees 2026” shows that ageism and adultism operate in parallel and affect different stages of a career, from entry into the labor market to development and promotion within organizations. As a result, both people with many years of experience and those just beginning their professional lives are being excluded.
The trend fits into the changing structure of the labor market. More than 6.2 million people aged 45+ are already working in Poland, alongside around 3.1 million people aged 25–34. Forecasts indicate that by 2030, people over the age of 50 will account for around 38% of the working-age population. Data cited in the report show that companies with high levels of diversity, including age diversity, are 35% more likely to achieve above-average financial results. Despite this, many organizations still operate with a “silent filter” based on age, one that eliminates candidates already at the recruitment stage and affects the further course of their professional careers.
“At least one-third of respondents had personally experienced ageism or adultism in their own relationships with employers, and 40% said they had seen such phenomena in their organizations. In the labor market, on the one hand, we are excluding employees with extensive professional experience who are often capable of leading organizations toward growth, and on the other hand we are excluding younger people who could become the successors of those retiring,” Anna Macnar explained.
The study, conducted among more than 1,800 employees, found that 29% of respondents observed age-based discrimination between co-workers. The invisible filter is already operating at the starting line: 40% of respondents said they did not apply for a position because of their age, and one in three hid their age on their CV or during a job interview. One in four workers received feedback suggesting their application had been rejected because of age. The older the employees, the more often such declarations appeared.
Recruiters surveyed by HRM Institute also admit that, during recruitment processes, they often ask themselves a range of questions related to candidates’ age, such as how long the person might stay with the company because of their age, whether they will fit in with the team, or whether the candidate is technologically up to date. One in three recruiters admitted that they realized they had been guided by stereotypes when choosing a candidate.
“Candidates say that recruiters, often very young themselves, see them as too old and assume they may not be able to cope with technology. In fact, people over the age of 45 sometimes spend a very long time looking for work,” the HRM Institute president said.
Age-related bias is also present in the language used and in the way recruitment processes are conducted. Thirty-seven percent of employers admit to using age-profiled wording in job advertisements. The most common example is a requirement for a specific number of years of experience, cited by 33% of surveyed companies, while 12% still use phrases such as “young, dynamic team.” Nine out of 10 surveyed employees said they had encountered such wording in job ads.
“HR departments and recruiters have a very strong influence on who is selected for recruitment processes, and sometimes they may exclude people consciously, and sometimes unconsciously. Managers sometimes communicate that they want very specific kinds of people, of a certain age or another. Very often, instead of focusing on the fact that we need age-diverse people in teams, recruiters look at whether a manager will be satisfied not with the candidate’s competencies, but with their age,” said Anna Macnar.
Employees’ everyday experiences confirm the scale of the problem. Forty-five percent of respondents pointed to jokes and comments about age, 32% to questioning of competence, and 31% to assumptions about a lack of technological skills. In the case of younger workers, the more common experiences were having their ideas dismissed as unimportant (21%) and being treated in a patronizing way (17%).
The development of technology, especially AI and automation, is affecting not only the questioning of the competence of people aged 45+, but also the employment prospects of younger workers. Technological change is reducing the number of entry-level positions, which have traditionally been the basic stage for gaining professional experience. Twenty-one percent of employer representatives admit that people under 30 have to prove their competencies more strongly than others, while 80% point to younger workers’ limited access to more responsible tasks.
“This is a dangerous path, because the youngest people, who do not yet know how to do a job, will not be able to learn those functions, and as a consequence we will not have successors in our organizations,” the HRM Institute president argued.
“Young people are being placed in specialist roles they are not prepared for. We have a problem with business management, motivation, staff turnover and a lack of leadership,” said Joanna Malinowska-Parzydło, an expert on leadership decisions.
The HRM Institute report shows that the feeling of unequal treatment is particularly strong among people aged 45–59 and those over 60, who more often point to a lack of equal opportunities in the labor market.
“The world is ruled by useless stereotypes,” Joanna Malinowska-Parzydło stressed. “People who are often labeled 55+, and whom I call the premium generation, fall out of the labor market because we have a problem with talent management in companies. HR systems have stopped seeing the most experienced employees, who are indispensable for making decisions in times of turbulence.”
She points out that one of the mechanisms of exclusion is matching teams by age, as well as the way recruitment processes function, including algorithms. As a result, experience is no longer treated as an advantage and instead begins to limit employment opportunities. The most common form of discrimination encountered by employees was refusal of employment due to being “overqualified,” indicated by 45% of respondents. Directors and senior managers most often encounter this explanation.
“Organizations without mature employees are like a library without knowledge or an empty hard drive. They have no access to the entire history of decision-making, so they often become helpless, they have to learn everything from scratch, and the costs are enormous. On top of that, we then face a leadership problem, because we have to fill managerial positions quickly with young people who have not had time to prepare for a completely different role than that of a specialist, a role that comes with responsibility for people,” the leadership expert explained.
The report “(In)visible Employees 2026” indicates that reducing the scale of ageism and adultism requires the implementation of concrete management tools, including monitoring recruitment and development processes by age group and eliminating language and practices that reinforce prejudice. Standardization of HR processes and greater transparency in decisions concerning hiring and promotion are also of key importance.
At the same time, the data show that companies still implement such solutions only to a limited extent. Just 14% of organizations use so-called blind CV procedures, which involve removing data that could indicate a candidate’s age. Sixty-two percent of companies do not operate systems to monitor cases of discrimination, and 68% do not organize training on unconscious bias.
“Companies should prepare managers to lead multigenerational teams in such a way that those teams communicate well with one another. Companies are people, so management boards should also be able to communicate with people of every age,” Joanna Malinowska-Parzydło said.
