Transcript
Speaker: Hey, stop for a second. Before you check the air quality on your app on the phone, check the air quality in your career. Right now, 115 million Americans are under air quality alerts. Wildfire smoke from from Canada is is blanketing the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic in the United States.
Speaker: that the sky is sepia orange at two o'clock in the afternoon. It looks like something is is ending, the world perhaps. But here's the part that nobody's gonna tell you to- today.
Speaker: Every worker over 50 in this country is already under a different kind of alert and nobody is issuing warnings for that one. I'm gonna tell you a story about a Friday in July, about heat and smoke,
Speaker: and a cardboard box. About walking to your car while the sky burns. And about what happens after the haze clears.
Speaker: Picture this. and And for some of you, that may be easy because maybe it happened to you. I remember my Friday afternoon six years ago. So, okay, so it's 3 p.m. on a Friday in July. You got the calendar invite 2.45.
Speaker: Quick sync, 15 minutes, no agenda. You knew. Let me be honest with you. You always know deep down inside.
Speaker: The body knows before the brain admits it. And your stomach, I mean, it tightens, right? You pulse at finds it, finds its way into your temples. You you you feel it just just pulsing right here.
Speaker: You walk past cubicles and somewhere in the back of your mind, You're counting. How many years, how many how many desks and and how many versions of yourself have there been in this building?
Speaker: The HR person is sitting there. You've never met them. Maybe they they flew in or maybe they are on a screen because after all, it is 2026 and they don't always bother showing up in person anymore.
Speaker: A manager that you've worked under for three years now can't even meet your eyes. They read from a script, right? Holding it up, restructuring, realignment. We're going in a different direction.
Speaker: And just like that, 25 years ends in fifteen minutes
Speaker: Here's the thing, January of this year, 108,000 people got that same calendar invite. That's a 118% increase over the year before.
Speaker: The highest January total since 2009 in the global financial crisis. Through June, American employers announced 443,000 job cuts. are coming.
Speaker: fifty eightight per cent of companies say that more layoffs are coming One in four Americans in the country, they feel that they're next, but they don't publish the ages.
Speaker: the The government doesn't track it. The companies, they don't report it. The older workers' Benefit Protection Act of 1990, it requires age data for layoffs, and they just don't collect it.
Speaker: Think about that. The law requires it, and they simply just look the other way and that matters.
Speaker: So when you're walking to your car in July in that heat and that air carrying a cardboard box with a a dying plant and the framed photo that you've kept on your desk all these years, you're invisible.
Speaker: Invisible to the spreadsheet that that cut you. Invisible to the the data that was supposed to to to track who got cut.
Speaker: Now, let's let's talk about why this happens in July. Here's what I've learned myself about this. And I want you to hear this clearly.
Speaker: Summer layoffs are not random. They're strategic, actually. The C-Suite, they're on vacation. The media, right now they're watching wildfires, the the heat domes, the political chaos.
Speaker: Your colleagues, they're all posting beach photos on LinkedIn, which has turned into a kind of Facebook now. The world is distracted. It's distracted. And that's exactly how they want it.
Speaker: Q3 last year 202,000 people. two and a two thousand announced job cuts. The highest third quarter since the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. July alone, 62,000 people got let go. 140% spike over the last July.
Speaker: These aren't accidents. this This is a pattern. They bank on your silence. They count on the shame. They know that that when your neighbor asks how is everything going at the 4th of July barbecue, you're you're going to say, fine, it's fine.
Speaker: Because you haven't told anyone yet. You may have not even told your spouse for that matter. Because frankly, who gets laid off in July?
Speaker: Who carries a cardboard box when the whole country is on vacation?
Speaker: You. that's That's who. And hundreds of thousands of you. Every summer.
Speaker: And here's the part they didn't plan on. The sky is literally orange this year. There's no hiding what's happening. The smoke outside is the smoke inside.
Speaker: you You can't pretend that the air is clean when you can taste it. Now, let me tell you what's different about 2026. twenty twenty six
Speaker: One in three layoffs in June was driven by AI, not related to AI, not during the age of AI, driven by AI.
Speaker: 14,000 people losing their jobs in a single month because an algorithm decided they were redundant. And so far this year, 101,000 jobs eliminated by the same machinery.
Speaker: And here is ah an irony alert. We spent decades being told that experience was our competitive advantage, that that our wisdom was irreplaceable.
Speaker: And now a machine trained on Reddit threads and and GitHub repositories has become promoted to judge which jobs matter and which don't.
Speaker: and And if you think AI is neutral, let me give you the June 2026 reality check. A federal judge ruled not that long ago that Workday, the hiring platform used by companies across the country, must face a lawsuit alleging that AI screening tools discriminated against applicants over 40.
Speaker: Over 40. Not over 50, not over 60. 40. The bias, it starts early. And now it's automated.
Speaker: And then there's Meta. 26 employees filed a lawsuit about two weeks ago, July, 2026. They allege that Meta used AI systems to select people for layoffs.
Speaker: Who got flagged? Disproportionately workers that were on medical leave, workers on parental leave and older workers. The algorithm didn't wake up one morning and learn or decide to discriminate.
Speaker: It learned it over time. It learned from decades of hiring data that soaked up the age bias. It learned from promotion patterns that rewarded youth.
Speaker: It learned from a culture that has has quietly, systematically, structurally been pushing older workers toward the door for years.
Speaker: The AI didn't invent ageism. It scaled it. It industrialized it. It made discrimination efficient.
Speaker: But here's what I want you to sit with for for just a minute. The wildfire smoke outside of your window right now That's new.
Speaker: That's this week. That'll clear. and And maybe it already has. But the smoke inside of your career, you've been breathing that for years.
Speaker: 90% of workers over 50 say they've experienced ageism in the workplace. 90%. That's not a a fringe problem.
Speaker: That's the air. That's the the whole atmosphere around us. It's part and parcel to it. AARP found that 65% of workers over 50 had experienced age discrimination in the workplace and nearly nearly one in four feel like they're actively being pushed out.
Speaker: So let me be honest with you on on this. The layoff, it didn't start in that 15 minute meeting in July. It started months ago, maybe even years.
Speaker: It started the first time your manager stopped making eye contact. The first project that went to somebody younger or the the first culture fit conversation that happened at a happy hour that you weren't even invited to.
Speaker: The first time that that somebody used the word legacy to describe your skill set, maybe even the word vintage. You got used to that, right?
Speaker: That's the part that that breaks my heart. You got used to breathing that bad air. You adjusted, you told yourself it wasn't that bad. You told yourself that that you were just being paranoid.
Speaker: And then one Friday in July, someone one read to you from a script and suddenly you you couldn't pretend anymore.
Speaker: Here's what I want you to know and i want you to really hear this.
Speaker: The smoke, it it clears. It always does. The wildfire haze that's been choking the Eastern seaboard in the U.S. right now, it's it's going to lift. and And it probably already has in some places.
Speaker: The corporate smokescreen that that they blew, the the restructuring, the the realignment and the algorithm that flagged your name, that clears too.
Speaker: and And when it does, here's what's still standing. You. Your expertise, it doesn't burn. 25 years of navigating office politics, managing crises, reading the room, knowing when to push and when to wait.
Speaker: That doesn't disappear just because a spreadsheet says so. No, that doesn't evaporate because an AI scanned your job title.
Speaker: That doesn't turn to ash because a manager has not been able to look you in the eye for three years.
Speaker: There's some things that you need to know about the market. 35% of the long-term unemployed, the the people out of work for six months or more are are over 55.
Speaker: But you're not alone. You're not some kind of an outlier. You're the pattern that they don't want to name and patterns, well, frankly, they can be broken.
Speaker: You can age proof your resume. You can remove the dates. you You update your email address, right? No more Yahoo, no more AOL. And you get on LinkedIn and do it the right way. And I don't mean passively, I mean strategically.
Speaker: Network into roles instead of cold applying on work day and that little AI filter tool that they were using. Remember? Build the bridge work that keeps the lights on while you find the right next chapter.
Speaker: But before any of that, before the tactics, before the strategy, I want you to do one single thing. Stop blaming yourself.
Speaker: You didn't fail. You weren't obsolete. You were targeted by a system, by a culture. And now an algorithm, it's trained on that very culture.
Speaker: They picked a Friday in July. they They picked a ah week when the sky was orange and the the news was about the wildfire and and and nobody was watching what was happening in the workplace.
Speaker: They thought the the smoke would cover their tracks. But here's the thing about about smoke. It clears.
Speaker: and And when it does, we're still here. We are still standing. And we know the terrain better than anyone who's ever walked it.
Speaker: I want you to do something for me this week. if If this episode resonated, if if you felt it because you've gone through this, if you've been through that Friday in July, or or you're afraid it's coming, drop a comment down below in the notes.
Speaker: Tell your story. Don't tell it for me, though. Tell it for the person who's who's going to read it at 2 o'clock in the morning, who's who's unable to sleep and wondering if they're the only one.
Speaker: They need reinforcement because they need to know that that they're not. We need to know that we're not. The next episode, we're going to continue to to tackle ageism because that's what we do here.
Speaker: Youth runs fast, but age knows the terrain. See you next time.
