Aging workers experience the longest unemployment spells of any segment of the labor force and are much more likely than their younger counterparts to drop out of employment entirely. Yet, we still know little about aging workers' struggles to regain employment following job loss. Do they see themselves as structurally disadvantaged? And, what are the consequences for selfperceptions, notions of fairness, and even mental health? We fill this gap by drawing on 52 semistructured qualitative interviews with workers aged 40 to 65 who lost jobs during the Great Recession and have been attempting to find work since. Notable is their keen awareness of both age-specific labor market disadvantages and processes complicating re-employment for all unemployed workers during this period. Respondents articulate sophisticated analyses of how employer biases, credentialism, the job search process, and changes in the economy present very real barriers to reemployment. These perceptions and experiences, our materials suggest, have far-reaching social-psychological consequences, including loss of belief in meritocracy within major institutions; questioning of self-worth; and feelings of loss, isolation, hopelessness and depression-consequences to which stratification scholars should devote more attention, especially since many aging workers become discouraged and eventually drop out of the labor force.

In this article, we propose that metropolitan areas represent differential “risk contexts” to the people who live within them and argue that growing insecurity in U.S. metropolitan areas arises out of cross-cutting economic weaknesses that are too often seen in isolation. The housing crisis that led up to the Great Recession was a moment in which the underlying vulnerabilities in our markets and institutions were laid bare. The crisis also occurred in the context of the “great risk shift” in American society—where individuals are increasingly responsible for managing the ordinary risks of life in a modern economy. The multiple sources of precarity in the housing market highlight the complex nature of insecurity that many Americans face. We look at metropolitan variability in foreclosures to identify conditions that contributed to the housing crisis. We build on prior research by showing different sources of vulnerability to the housing crisis in metropolitan areas—including labor market insecurity and housing market insecurity—and find that some of the metropolitan areas that fared the worst faced problems in both markets before the crisis.

Interest in older workers has recently expanded due to concerns over labor force "graying." Research and policy on aging adults' labor market participation have, thus far, framed the decision to labor as one shaped solely by the desires and capacities of older workers themselves. This perspective fails to recognize how multiple employer-side barriers play a large role in defining -and limiting -available choices. In this review, I synthesize the multi-disciplinary literature on employer-side barriers to older workers' labor market participation. In particular, I identify and discuss individual-, meso-, and social structural-level barriers that uniquely affect this group, noting where gaps in understanding remain. I consider older workers primarily as a whole to demonstrate how age operates as a distinct, important identity; however, I also ref lect on how age overlaps with both other identities and cohort membership. Next, I brief ly consider the relationship between these employer-side barriers and aging adults' life chances, particularly in an era of austerity. Although I focus on the United States case, I also note key cross-national similarities and differences. Finally, ref lecting upon the foregoing review, I suggest that a redirection of public policy is necessary to effectively respond to this contemporary demographic shift.