So, I was told today that I am, basically, too old to be considered for a particular job

[Major Nikon]

69. You can look at the statistics for yourself

Here's the stats for all complaints received by the EEOC:
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm

Here's the stats for just the ADEA piece of that pie:
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/adea.cfm

The monetary benefits paid for all complaints in 2011 was $365 million. For just ADEA complaints, the payout was $95 million. That means out of all the different types of cases the EEOC tracks, ADEA cases paid roughly 1/4th of all the payouts. If you go to the litigation statistics, you'll see ADEA cases are paying a huge piece of the pie there too. So I'm not sure why the lawyer told you that, but there's a lot of lawyers out there taking these cases and winning and they are winning big payouts.

Many law firms specialize in nothing but EEO cases. I know one lawyer in particular that loves age discrimination cases, and particularly non-selection because they are some of the easiest to win. Establishing prima facie is pretty simple. Prove the person is over 40. Prove they were non-selected. Prove a significantly younger person was selected. The lawyer doesn't really have to do anything here because the EEOC investigator establishes all those facts. Once prima facie is established, the burden of proof goes back to the employer to prove they DIDN'T discriminate. Pretty much the only way they can do that is to prove the person or people they selected for the job were more qualified. The deck is inevitiably stacked against the employer because older people tend to have much more job experience than younger people. The deck gets stacked even farther for the complaintant, because the ADEA specifies specific rights which must be afforded to age discrimination complaintants that other complaintants don't get.