Australia must overcome the "deep cultural prejudice" against older people to avoid consigning senior Australians to decades of unemployment, Age and Disability Discrimination Commissioner Susan Ryan says.
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Ms Ryan, who will on Wednesday launch a national inquiry into employment discrimination against older Australians and people with disability, said employment rates for both these groups were "unacceptably low".
Older Australians make up about a quarter of the population but only 16 per cent of the workforce. Australians with disability make up about 15 per cent of the working age population, but only 10 per cent of them have jobs.
"Despite these statistics, evidence shows that people with disability and older Australians are willing to work," Ms Ryan said.
"We all lose when willing people are excluded from the workforce."
Research conducted for the Australian Human Rights Commission by Deloitte projected that increasing the older workforce by 5 per cent would increase national economic output by $48 billion a year.
Ms Ryan said one in three discrimination complaints to the commission related to disability discrimination, and one third of these related to employment. Sixty per cent of the complaints the commission receives about age discrimination are about treatment in the workplace or while trying to get work.
Ms Ryan said longer lifespans made the challenge of tackling the "deep cultural prejudice" against older people even more important than previously.
"We've had this demographic revolution – we're living a generation longer than our forbears did and yet the workplace environment hasn't changed," she said.
"So if you lose your job in your 50s through downsizing or restructuring, and because of age prejudice you can't get back into the workforce, you could be without paid work for 40 years.
"We did some research on age stereotypes a couple of years ago ... we found that one in 10 employers said there was an age above which they wouldn't hire someone and that age was 50, which is ridiculous, really. A person can be at their most productive [at 50] and likely to be so for the next few years."
Ms Ryan said while people with disability also faced prejudice, a very low level of public understanding of disability also contributed to their challenges.
"A lot of employers really feel uncertain about how to go about hiring someone with a disability. They're not sure about what supports they'll need to put in place, they're not sure of how they can discuss the issue of the disability with the employee.
"We want our inquiry to be an opportunity for employers to set out what it is they're worried about [and] what would need to change for them to change their attitude and open up these jobs for people who've got the capacity to do the job, be they older people or people with disability."
The inquiry, which was requested by Attorney-General George Brandis, will report by July 2016.
