Author: Wang Shujuan (Senior Economist, School of Labor Relations and Human Resources, China Institute of Labor Relations) is now in the spring recruitment time. According to media reports, some enterprises use the age of 30 as the upper limit of recruitment age, keeping some job seekers out of this age threshold. Many job seekers sighed that "the 35-year-old workplace crisis is ahead of schedule", triggering social discussion. It can be clear that age discrimination is behind the age limit that has nothing to do with job requirements, which violates the equal employment rights of workers. In this regard, the media, scholars and other parties have called for curbing and eliminating such discrimination, but the effect seems not optimistic. How to solve this problem requires us to clarify its causes and more accurately apply the medicine to the case. Age discrimination in employment is the result of multiple factors. From the perspective of enterprises, the age limit is mainly set by private small and medium-sized enterprises. Such enterprises generally lack a complete training system and development channel. Driven by the maximization of internal interests and the trend of "conforming" to the flexible, short-term and young external employment, they will inevitably update the employment group by "replacing the old with the new". From the perspective of posts, the posts with age restrictions are mainly concentrated in the following categories. The first category is grass-roots posts, such as administrative assistant, cashier, etc. This type of post is mainly engaged in transactional work according to the work standards, requires strong execution, does not require too much experience accumulation, and is highly replaceable. The second category is service posts, such as sales customer service, catering service, etc. This position mainly deals with customers. The third category is the posts in creative and innovative enterprises that update their knowledge and skills very quickly. In recent years, China's foreign development environment has become more complex, especially under the impact of the epidemic, the development of catering, tourism and other industries has been restrained, and the demand for enterprise employment has decreased. From the perspective of the supply side, every year, a group of college graduates with a new record join the employment force, and the contradiction between supply and demand is further highlighted. Among them, the most affected are the older workers in the grass-roots posts. On the one hand, because China's current legislation and policies on age discrimination are not clear, it is difficult to distinguish "age discrimination" from "employment conditions are inconsistent" in practice, and the supervision cost is also high. People acquiesce in the existence of this phenomenon, and it is basically in the state of "people do not elect officials", and the cost of enterprises breaking the law is low. On the other hand, it is needless to say that China's lower age threshold in the workplace is an inertial manifestation of the vicious circle of employment under the background of long-term demographic dividend. The age of "30+" is the golden stage of personal career development and bears multiple roles. According to the changing trend of China's population age structure in the future, the balance of labor supply and demand will also change to some extent. In the long run, the trend of younger employment will also be disrupted. In this regard, policies should be guided first. In some developed countries, it is illegal for employers to have any request or suggestion in this regard that workers' resumes do not include photos, gender and age. Because the law has clear provisions on this, and the law enforcement is very strict, the cost of enterprises breaking the law is very high, so it becomes a consensus to avoid age discrimination. How to curb age discrimination in employment in China? First of all, it is necessary to deepen and refine the legal level, so as to better protect the employment autonomy and labor of enterprises