9.48 Employee performance appraisal.

A major issue that arises in RIFs like that in the previous exercise is the extent to which employees in various groups are similar. If, for example, employees over 40 receive generally lower performance ratings than younger workers, that might explain why more older employees were laid off. We have data on the last performance appraisal. The possible values are “partially meets expectations,” “fully meets expectations,” “usually exceeds expectations,” and “continually exceeds expectations.” Because there were very few employees who partially met expectations, we combine the first two categories. Here are the data.

Note that the total number of employees in this table is less than the number in the previous exercise because some employees do not have a performance appraisal. Analyze the data. Do the older employees appear to have lower performance evaluations?