The Dangers of the Diamond

In developed nations, unemployment has declined, labor pools are aging, and younger populations are shrinking,  according to recent Lightcast research. Among the many effects this has on the labor market, this impacts employers’ ability to hire talent.  Employers around the globe consistently report that  “hiring and retention” is the major hindrance to getting work done. 

However, employers have an unfortunate tendency to make these challenges worse for themselves: they rely too much on the prime-age labor force (i.e., workers age 25 to 54). Employers across numerous occupations, from those requiring college degrees to skilled trades and even laborers, typically aim to hire workers with some experience, but not too much. If you ask any new college grad, they will tell you about the woes of the paradox of finding an “entry level” job that requires “3-5 years of experience” when they have no experience at all. 

When employers only hire moderately experienced candidates, and ignore those on the far end of the age range, it’s called “hiring in the middle of the diamond.” And this is an increasingly flawed approach to acquiring talent.

When discussing these issues, employers are often demonized on two fronts: Ageism for not valuing older and more experienced workers, while also neglecting entry level workers due to lack of experience. Both of these trends shut out people from changing into new professions once they have decades of experience or gatekeeping younger adults away from jobs that would reward them for their expensive degrees or skills certifications they have achieved. There are certainly real downsides to these choices that employers are making, but is this demonization merited? 

Why do employers not hire older workers with a lot of experience, and why, conversely, do they not want to hire people with little to no experience? The answers are more complicated than the easy narratives offer and they both have to do with investment and return.

How did it Start?

Older Workers

Let’s start with older, more experienced workers. Employers offer many reasons for not valuing these workers, and most are related to perceptions: These workers won’t devote their life to the job. They are set in their ways and can’t change. They won’t stay very long. They physically can’t handle the responsibilities.

From an older jobseeker’s perspective, different problems emerge. They bring years of experience to the table, so why is that not being recognized by employers? Are their years of work not worth more pay? 

 These are difficult and interconnected questions, and seeing them applied in real life might make their answers easier to find. Here are several examples of how this perception gap manifests in the job searches of older workers:

Let’s look at the occupation of an HR Manager. One third of people working in this profession are 35 to 44 years old, according to Lightcast demographics data. Considering many likely started out in staff roles as junior human resource workers, this likely means that they had roughly 5-10 years experience before becoming an HR Manager. Some proportion of HR Managers are younger than 35 and some have even fewer years of work experience. So it’s likely that a majority of working HR managers have less than 10 years’ experience. Employers are used to having this level of experience and paying wages consistent with it for HR talent (in this case, up to $130,000 a year, according to Lightcast wage data). Roughly one in five HR Managers (22%) are over the age of 55, which means that roughly one in five companies are accustomed to having senior HR managers in that age range, and paying the commensurate  wages, which are now in the $150,000 a year range.

In order to manage their own salary expectations, highly experienced jobseekers need to know that only one in five companies are accustomed to employing highly experienced HR managers, and paying a premium for them. The data does not indicate that higher paying jobs that value a lot of experience are not available, only that they are fewer. That means the search for them will likely be longer, and being aware of this type of data becomes more and more relevant.

It is critical for older jobseekers to know what the normal value of the job is to the labor market, so as to not get their hopes up. Most employers are used to functioning with lower levels of experience and may not value or pay more for more experience, unless the correlation between experience and value is determined.

Inexperienced Workers

Inexperienced workers are often caught in the “experience trap” described earlier. When it comes to a lack of experience, it is important to divide this population of inexperienced workers into two categories: those who lack experience because they are young, and those who lack experience because they are changing careers.

Why Not Hire Young Workers?

In a recent survey, more than a quarter of executives said they wouldn’t hire entry level workers. Forty-eight percent of employees believe entry level workers are “not prepared for work.” That is a direct quote, and it bears some further analysis. “Nearly half of executives (49%) and over a third of employees (37%) pointed to a lack of soft skills, with traits like communication, collaboration, and adaptability topping the list.”

It’s not uncommon for older generations to look at young workers and think that “they don’t make em like they used to.” But in this case, workforce data provides a convincing explanation as to why. Many younger workers simply have not had a job or steady work before they started looking for a professional role.

As of February 2025, there were nearly 18 million 16–19-year-olds in the US population. This is 4.4 million higher than the number of 16–19-year-olds in the beginning of 1966. However, there are only 205,000 more 16–19-year-olds working today than in 1966; and all of that small net increase in workers can be attributed to immigrants. As seen in the chart, when the Baby Boomers exited the 16–19-year-old labor pool around 1980, labor force participation started to drop, and then plummeted again when Millennials hit this age group. Recently, the data shows that only about one in three young people are working or looking for work, and only one in five 16–19 year olds in school have a job.

However, this number is probably artificially inflated as recent increases in participation are due to the increased presence of immigrants that surged in ‘22 through ‘23 and have much higher labor force participation, nearly 4 percentage points higher than the native born population.

These two graphs show that the 16-19 population in the US has doubled its expected growth due to immigrants who have much higher labor force participation than the US-born labor force, since the foreign-born population came to the country to work.

These are critical data points. They matter because many entry-level jobs, jobs created for youth, give young adults experience but also teach them discipline, accountability, and communication skills not learned outside of work. What is happening, at a societal scale, is what happens when entire swaths of a generation miss these critical experiences, and lack the requisite skills for work as a consequence.

Why Not Hire Workers Who are Changing Careers?

The second type of inexperienced workers are people who are simply trying to change careers. In today’s employment landscape, reskilling or upskilling are hot topics. However, when upskilling and reskilling are completed by the individual outside of a corporate setting, they often don’t get to reap the rewards. But why?

Many employers feel that it is most cost-effective to hire workers with some experience so that training and the time it takes the employee to become productive is minimal. When training occurs internally, the company can minimize investment risk by upskilling and reskilling employees they already believe are capable and loyal, in a controlled environment, that directly reflects how the company utilizes the skills in question. Thus, ramp-up time is quicker, and the likelihood of success perceived to be higher. This finding goes across the spectrum—from skilled trades to cybersecurity—where someone’s lack of experience could be expensive to upskill at best, but actually dangerous at worst if they can’t adequately perform their job.

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Now that we have an understanding of some of the reasons why employers choose not to hire very experienced or inexperienced candidates, let’s discuss why this is itself a risky strategy. To understand why, you have to know the dangers of diamond hiring.

The Dangers of the Diamond

Employers who neglect very inexperienced or very experienced candidates face two main risks: 

1. The existing and impending extreme lack of workers

2. The rewards of building your own workforce

The Impending Lack of Talent (The Rising Storm)

In 2024, Lightcast published research that explored why the US workforce is facing a massive shortfall of workers, called The Rising Storm. The “rising” part of the title concerned the fact that although the US and most developed nations were seeing their labor forces age out and actually decline in size, this was going to get much more severe in the next several years. The “storm” aspect of the title was a reflection on how recent and current waves of labor shortages look like the outer bands of a hurricane. Sure, certain industries and occupations have felt the pains of shortages, but these shortages are a shadow of what the actual storm will bring. 

Companies that were used to taking advantage of the plentiful workforces of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, will now have to adapt to a permanently smaller workforce going forward. But just like people can prepare for storms in the forecast, companies can adapt to these adverse conditions by building a future-ready workforce. 

The key word here is “adapt”. Adapting, in this case, would mean reshaping mindsets and workforce strategies in order to broaden the hiring funnel as wide as possible. How much of the labor force is excluded when you hire in the middle of the diamond? According to the most recent BLS labor force projections, the US labor force is estimated to grow by 6.2 million workers by 2033, with 36% of that growth coming from the 65 and older population. Even since the mid 1990s, the percentage of the labor force over 55 has jumped dramatically as Baby Boomers entered their 60s and 70s.

Let’s isolate age and look at several occupations’ current age make-up and see how many potential workers are on the age extremes.

For many highly educated positions, the labor force is rather small, however, that changes significantly for non-degreed jobs. Ignoring inexperienced workers typically knocks out about one out of every five or six candidates. For highly experienced workers, though, the story is very different. While some occupations, like software development, do not see large populations of people over 55, other professional roles have roughly one in four or five people over 55. For jobs like home health aides or janitors, that balloons to one out of every three workers. In total there are over 1.1 million people in the US over 55 looking for work, double the number from 1995, and that number is expected to grow.

Altogether, hiring within the middle of the diamond cuts off about one out of every three potential workers overall. If we also add in those candidates who have reskilled and are looking for a career change, this number only increases. Research has indicated that nearly one-third of people 25-44 have completely changed their career.

A snapshot of the most recent Lightcast job postings for the four largest professional sectors (Business, IT, Engineering, and Life Sciences) that specifically noted an experience level, produces this table.

Let’s start with inexperienced workers. Roughly one in 10 postings are geared towards the entry level worker, meaning that 90% of postings are not looking to train or upskill a job candidate, and this, in part, is causing recent college graduates to have higher unemployment rates than their peers who didn’t go to college.

On the flip side, these postings show us that only 10% of postings value candidates with over a decade of experience, meaning the large majority appear to be content with much less. Both jobseekers and employers can learn a lot by seeing these numbers. For experienced jobseekers, it may be painful to realize that experience does not command higher pay. The market price of a job is the price that the job is successfully filled at, not the salary demands of people seeking the job. That said, employers should take note: what does successfully filling a job look like, and are there lessons to be learned in hiring outside of the middle of the diamond?

The Rewards of Building a Workforce

We’ve established why hiring older or less experienced workers could be beneficial. How does that compare to the potential financial concerns about hiring those workers? 

The cost of potential turnover due to limited years left in the workforce are often mentioned when discussing older workers. In the past, companies and workers more frequently had long-term bonds. Investing in a worker was worth it if the company received a strong return on their investment in time.

If the reason for not wanting to employ a highly experienced worker, with salary expectations being equal to less experienced candidates, is that you believe they will not be with you long term, then that logic is faulty. An overqualified worker should return value much quicker than an underqualified worker. Given that the average tenure for a job is now just 3.9 years, a number that has been falling consistently over time, then getting a highly productive return quickly should be cost-effective. If an older worker has the right experience, if not more, than the job requires, and they are willing to take a job where pay does not reward them for their experience, then employers would justifiably be accused of ageism for not employing them. Experience may not command a pay premium, but it should always carry an expectation of faster speed to contribution.

What about candidates who lack experience? The unwillingness to grow your labor force organically has several costly consequences. When you want workers that 70% of other postings want, you are often renting a person for a time and the costs of hiring, ramp-up, and severance stack up. Free agents go to the highest bidder, and they may not care about your company culture or long-term plans—especially workers who constantly churn jobs in search of pay rate bursts in the prime of their careers. 

Secondly, the financial risks of hiring at the entry level are lower if development is handled correctly: a good template to follow is to offer an entry level wage, training, and then reward for those who show the most promise. Investing in a strong training program helps build a strong company culture and loyal employees who see a career path in front of them because they know others who followed the same path are advancing.

So What Do You Do Now?

If you are hiring in the diamond, you have removed at least a third of candidates from your pipeline, while  competing against 80-90% of all other postings, ensuring a wave of turnover and wage inflation. But what can you do to get out of this cycle? You want to hire on the top of and bottom of the diamond. What data do you need, and how will you build your case to your hiring managers and senior leadership?

To go forward, let’s go back through this analysis and look at the key data points that were pulled from Lightcast data sets.

1. Compensation both trend and compensation by experience. The first step to making an internal business case starts with ROI. Driving leadership to a conclusion will be best achieved through cost savings or cost avoidance. Compensation data shows where the market is at, and what levels you need to focus your strategy.

2. Occupation by age. The width of the center part of a diamond, those workers that have some but not a lot of experience, will vary by occupation. Knowing the candidate pool that will be omitted and the size by market and help bring scalpel-like precision in knowing which markets, which occupations, are most likely to succeed when hiring on the tips of the diamond.

3. Adjacent skill sets, career pathways data. The way to reskilling and upskilling starts with understanding not only what skills you may need to train but also which skills are closest to your key skills and the numbers of people,  jobseekers, who have those skills. Maybe opening a window just a bit allows a much larger and more affordable labor pool to come in.

4. Educational data such as which schools produce which majors, volumes of graduates. If you are a company who knows they would like to keep a steady rate of new hires over time, building relationships with skilled trades schools or universities can help you better hone in your training programs but also ask if the schools themselves will teach certain skillsets you need.

In all of these areas, the best-in-class labor market data and research from Lightcast can help you understand and contextualize how to hire more effectively, and not only hiring in the diamond. While partnering across industry, higher education, and the public sector, the combination of Lightcast’s analytics software, professional services, and data shares allows you to have the data you need to make better informed hiring decisions at your fingertips. Let’s discuss how we can help.

To read more about the trends affecting the global labor market like AI, labor shortages, and geopolitical factors, read our latest reasearch, Fault Lines.