Thanks for the comments. I haven’t been keeping up with the site much, mainly because I went back to work a few months ago. I just saw an interesting article the other day about people over 55 starting their own businesses. I’ll post it to the site shortly.

It’s a brutally hard thing to do successfully, no doubt. Hopefully people will start hiring again soon.

Good luck.

I just turned 50 this year and I am unemployed. I have been for over a year now…my story isn’t anything particularly unique—”Involuntary Reduction in Force” they called it…laid off from a job as a Computer Field Technician. Can’t really blame them either—The bean counters saw the coming administration, pretty much figured they were going to raise taxes, and decided to lighten the load–as they say, the biggest expense a company has is its workforce.

And yeah, I do want to hit someone…because it wasn’t just the company that I was working for that figured the Uncle Sam was going to tax the hell out of them, EVERY company thought the same thing, and THEY laid off people too.

Now we’re all like survivors of the Titanic, all trying to hang onto the same piece of driftwood.

I’ve been looking for jobs and have come up empty so far. I even thought about starting my own business, but what’s the point? See, people tell you “you know, you ought to start your own Computer Repair business” and leave it at that like some half-eaten sandwich…although well meaning, they don’t stop to consider the costs involved, profit margin, etc–and by the time you add it all up, you’d have to charge just as much or more than the mainstream guys. And when you try to explain it to them and how little you’d actually make to live on in order to stay competitive, they come back and tell you “well, its better than nothing”…NO IT’S NOT YOU JERK! Yeah, I just love working my ass off just to stay POOR!
Sorry…on edge a little because I found out my Unemployment benefits ran out today and that I don’t qualify for the extention, and facing the possibility of both homelessness and starvation tends to make you a little cranky…

I agree completely. And if you don’t get laid off, working on that self-employment plan is still a very smart thing to do. Maybe you can work into it gradually.

I have worked at my present job for 12 years, and my gut feeling is I am about a week away from being let go. The trend the past few years has been to hire younger, cheaper and foriegn workers. I have thought about what I will do if it happens, and I am leaning towards self employment. I am not against looking for a job, but I think for a lot of people, a good strategy is to work on a self employment plan on the side. I think it will cushion the blow of rejection, and I think its the future for people over 50. So thats where I am headed. If I do indeed get laid off I will write back.

Good luck to you all

I’ll try to occasionally make subscribing worth your while. Take care.

Yeah, I know. You guys are getting a really bad deal. The last time we had a really bad recession, around 81, 82, I was recently out of college, and I couldn’t get a good job. I worked at a machine gun factory, a donut shop, a printed circuit board factory, and then I finally joined the army, mainly because my father-in-law was a recruiter and I was sick of printed circuit boards, and all of a sudden the army seemed like a good deal.

Not that I’m suggesting you do that. The thing is we so-called boomers (can’t stand that name) don’t have any time to recover. We lost tons of money we needed for our retirements. Believe me, I don’t want to be working forever preventing young people from getting jobs. It stinks for everybody.

So I’m on your side.

I graduated in June 2008 and have been unable to find work for a whole year now.