Untold stress and sleepless nights: Bill Howell’s story, recently featured in The i Paper, about his struggles to find a full-time role after 30 years as an engineer, was a depressing but increasingly familiar tale. Here was a man with more than three decades’ experience, made redundant during Covid and now, at 60, facing the brutal possibility that he may never again hold a full-time role. Rejection emails pile up. Recruiters ghost him. Despite ageism laws, interviewers cool when his age becomes clear. Many readers will empathise. The conclusion seems obvious: Britain has a problem with ageism.

And it does. Surveys show that nearly a quarter of people think employing someone over 50 simply doesn’t make business sense. One in five believe training older workers is a waste of money. A third think people become worse with technology as they age. Those attitudes are wrong, lazy and damaging. They deprive businesses of experience and stability and push capable people, like Howell, into financial anxiety.

But there is another uncomfortable truth. We cannot keep asking the same question and expecting a different answer. If you are in your sixties, unemployed and applying for the same full-time role you held at 45, the odds are not good. Not because you are incapable but because the labour market has changed. Entire industries have shrunk and recruitment models shifted. Employers often prefer cheaper, younger staff they can mould from scratch. Pretending otherwise is simply denial.

The reality is that many people from their late fifties onwards need to think differently: not about where they work but what they do. That may mean retraining and moving sectors. It means targeting jobs where the vacancies actually are. Britain currently has persistent shortages in areas like teaching and the NHS (especially paramedics and healthcare assistants). Social care has thousands of vacancies. Retail and hospitality constantly need reliable staff. Logistics and construction all face gaps. These are not glamorous pivots for a specialist career professional, but they are real opportunities. Some employers, like Aviva and Boots, have already recognised this. They are recruiting older workers, recognising their value. Flexible hours and mid-career training schemes are emerging, although far too slowly.

The need for this shift is clear. Life expectancy in the UK is now 79 for men and 83 for women. The state pension age is 66 and rising. Yet the average private pension pot is estimated to be only around £60,000, less for women. It’s nowhere near enough to fund decades of retirement. Meanwhile, post-pandemic, thousands more people aged 50 to 64 are economically inactive but say they would like to work. However, that huge pool of talent will not reconnect with work if the goal is solely to recreate past careers. Instead, the second half of working life may increasingly look different from the first. For me, that meant taking a terrifying leap into retraining as a teacher. And accepting I would never earn my previous salary.

Yes, we must challenge lazy stereotypes about older workers. Yes, employers should stop writing off decades of experience. But individuals also need to rethink the question. Instead of “How do I get my old job back?”, the better question might be: “Where am I needed now?”

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