Work at an older age is becoming business as usual. As life expectancy continues to increase, older adults are healthier and more active than in the past. In fact, 70 percent of workers said they expected to work for pay in retirement, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 2012 Retirement Confidence Survey.

That said, for older workers who lose a job and want to keep working that can be a problem. The average duration of unemployment is more than one year for workers 55 and older, above the average nine months for younger workers.

There are two undeniable reasons for this: First, discrimination against the unemployed is widespread. According to a recent survey of 1,500 recruiters and hiring managers, recruiters admitted that it was “easier for them to place someone with a criminal record (non-felony) in a new job than it is to place someone who has been unemployed for two years or more.”

Some job ads, in fact, brazenly say that applicants must be “currently employed.” In most places this is legal to do. Currently, only Washington D.C. has a law that bans that discrimination against the unemployed in hiring practices. Oregon and New Jersey laws ban discriminatory language in job postings. For FULL STORY, go to CNBC