Hundreds of job applications, exhausting searches and relentless rejection – the experience of attempting to get back into the workforce after losing their jobs in their 50s and 60s has proved an ordeal for some Britons.
For some, those efforts prove fruitless and lead jobseekers to reluctantly take early retirement. Others may have to rely on benefits to pay the bills while they continue to job hunt.
Recent research by the Centre for Ageing Better found that the number of people between 50 and state pension age having difficulty finding work was 918,000 – akin to the number of young people not in education, employment or training – at the end of last year, the highest since 2020. The count was 2.9 million when including those with long-term health conditions and caring responsibilities.
The Guardian asked people over 50 to get in touch and share their experiences of trying to return to work.
‘I can’t find a way out of this situation’
James, 59, who lives in south-west England, lost his job two years ago and, since then, has had “eight interviews from 598 job applications”.
“It has been horrible … and very stressful,” he says. “I have every application listed in an Excel file, none of which were successful for the roles advertised, though I did manage to get some other items of work as a result of them. Overall I have been barely employed, perhaps severely underemployed, for two years, and I can’t find a way out of this situation.”
James, who has worked in international development, says when he was applying for jobs in the early 2020s he was getting “an interview every 15 or 20 applications” but now “it’s about one per 80 applications”.
At the moment, he is scraping by with occasional editing for organisations in his sector and a bit of freelance writing for a magazine.
“It’s tiny, but it’s something,” he says. “I’ve also been living at a relative’s house, who very kindly has said I don’t need to contribute to costs there at the moment, but I rely on my savings when I need them.”
He says job application feedback is “never shared, so I’ve no grasp of why I fail”.
He adds: “I do wonder if age is an issue. Perhaps companies think a younger person will be more flexible, more capable, and they can mould them into their particular way of working. The only thing to do is to persevere and hope.”
‘Looking for a job is at times harder than actually doing a job’
Sally*, 52, who has worked in the charity sector and lives in Birmingham, says she has applied for “more than 100 roles” but “still no bites”.
She has had 17 interviews in the past 10 months and has been perplexed by immediate rejections for jobs for which she seemed well suited.
“I’ve applied for lower and higher level roles, for temp and part-time ones, some outside my field but where I feel my skills can bring value, and some roles that I don’t really want but am desperate,” she said. “I’ve had immediate noes for roles that appear to be written for me and have had interviews for roles which I applied for as a long shot. It’s tough out there.”
Sally, who is in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance, adds: “Looking for a job is at times harder than actually doing a job – not to mention the impact on your self-esteem, pocket, and relationships.”
She is not sure if age is a factor but feels it could be “part of the mix”.
“I’ve wondered if assumptions are made, if there’s perhaps a bias at play, is there an underlying feeling of threat? But I have to stop myself from going down that road. It won’t help my sense of self, as it’s something I cannot change.”
‘After three years of looking, I abandoned my search and retired’
David*, 66, who has worked in IT for 35 years, says he had hoped to find work after he was made redundant in early 2020, but after three years of looking he just could not find a job.
“After redundancy I used the Covid-19 period to plan my retirement and move house,” he says. “In 2021 I started to look for a new job.”
While David, who lives in the north-east of England, knew his IT experience was “out of date”, he says he was content to look for “part-time or temporary or minimum-wage jobs or zero-hours contracts”.
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“I partly expected I could get a job stacking shelves in a supermarket,” he says.
However, he found the job market much tougher than expected.
“In 2024, I abandoned the attempt and retired,” he says. “I had applied to all the supermarkets and never got a response.”
He says he applied to one well-known store only to see its chair on TV “complaining about how difficult it was to find employees due to the Brexit deal”.
‘As a fiftysomething woman, I feel invisible in the workplace and in public life’
In 2022, Liz, 51, took a six-month career break to care for her dying father.
She returned to the workplace in 2023; first, she took a part-time interim leadership role which was maternity cover. After that, she took a “quite junior role”, thinking it would “tide her over” until she secured a more senior position.
But now, more than two years on, she is still in the same job despite applying for other roles.
“I have applied for more than 100 jobs and only received a handful of interviews,” says Liz, who works in education and lives in London. “I think it is my age but also my gender. My worry is that I won’t be able to return to a senior position. I feel exhausted and deflated by the whole job-hunting experience.
“I feel like I’m being deskilled. But I’m not alone – many of my female friends who are around the same age as me are experiencing similar issues, and I also realise there are people not able to find any employment at all.”
She says that initially she thought her lack of success in interviews was solely down to her own shortcomings.
“I thought, well, there must be something wrong with me, with my profile, with what I’m saying, with how I’m interviewing. You do the soul searching.”
She recalls how just before one interview with a charity she was approached by an interview panel member who asked her: “Do you always dress so formally?”
“I felt it was a very personal reference to my age, and this clear bias made its way as the reason not to hire me,” she says. “I have worked with young people my entire career. At another charity, the feedback was that I lacked ‘presence’. What can I do with that?”
She adds: “There are lots of people like me in the sector I am applying for, so it means that employers have the pick. I feel invisible in the workplace and in public life as a fiftysomething woman. I just feel like experience isn’t valued any more.”
* Names have been changed
