In Their Fifties.Trusted to Run It.Struggling to Get Back In.
The evidence is scattered. Our lives aren't.
What happens when we leave work in our fifties? Can we get back in? At what level, and on what pay? How much does age count against us?
I've brought together the evidence I could find, drawing on a growing collection of 282 research findings, official statistics and other sources. This report makes that evidence readable in one place, including the findings that complicate the story, and the questions nobody has answered. It is the most comprehensive collection on this subject I have been able to find.
Three times the experience.Just over half the interviews.
67Aged 28. Nine years' experience.
37Aged 50. Thirty-one years' experience.
Rejection isn't a measure of your worth.
Two matched applicants sent CVs to the same 190 real vacancies in England in 2017 and 2018. The younger man was invited to interview by 67 employers. The older man, with more than three times the experience, by 37. In 34 jobs only the younger applicant was called. In 4, only the older.
The experiment tested sales and hospitality jobs in England before the pandemic. Both applicants were in work. It shows age affecting interview invitations in those jobs. It cannot tell us what happens across every occupation.
Drydakis, Paraskevopoulou and Bozani, IZA Discussion Paper 15567, 2022. Entry 2022-ev2 on The Evidence.
A Monday with no meetings
It is Monday morning, or any day in the working week, and I am sitting down to my desk at home. No meetings. Not to work. Not even to apply for jobs. I am sitting down to create opportunities. To put myself out there so that people who can pay me can see my worth.
I am building new work as a writer and adviser. There is loss in it. Money matters and it's nearly absent. But bigger than that has been the blow to who I think I am. Leaving my last role as a Chief Marketing Officer has also meant discovering how much of my identity had become attached to the title.
Three times at the top of a business. Left three times, not always when I chose. I started Gen X at Work to understand what is happening to our working lives: the responsibility we carry, what happens when a role ends, and how we build what comes next.
This report brings together the evidence I kept looking for. Gen X Stories is where we can add what it was like to live through it.
No single figure explains what happens after fifty. Read together, they show why leaving work, wanting work and getting hired again need to be understood separately.
You're not alone.
866,000
People aged 50 to 64 looking for work, or not looking but wanting it. More than the population of Leeds.
UK, April to June 2026. DWP.
Back in work. Back on less.
9.5% less
Over-fifties who lost a job and found another came back on 9.5% lower hourly pay on average. Fewer than two in three were back within six months, against around three in four under fifty.
UK, 1998 to 2020. Resolution Foundation.
57 is too old. Employers said so themselves.
57
1,000 HR decision-makers put the age a candidate becomes too old at 57 on average. 59% admitted making assumptions based on age. 42% had felt pressure from colleagues to hire someone younger.
Totaljobs with Professor Sarah Vickerstaff, October 2024.
Leaving wasn't always a choice.
Just over half
Of people who left their last job in their fifties and early sixties, just over half left for ill health, caring or redundancy.
UK, ONS survey data, published September 2026.
Unemployment is no higher.
2.9% v 3.0%
Unemployment at 50 to 64 is about the same as at 35 to 49. The two rates have tracked each other since 2014. That one surprised me.
UK, April to June 2026. DWP.
But unemployment isn't the whole story.
25.7%v 12.3%
A quarter of 50 to 64 year olds are neither working nor looking, against one in eight at 35 to 49. Sickness, retirement and caring each explain part of it, and need telling apart.
UK, April to June 2026. DWP.
Follow the story
Follow the Story
What other people born between 1965 and 1980 are going through at work, in their own words, with the evidence alongside. Including what’s happening to me.
A Field Note every week and a roundup at the end of each month. Unsubscribe at any time.
One report. A growing body of evidence.
The report is a first edition. The work continues.
Behind it is The Evidence: a growing collection of sources on our working lives, with dates, links and notes on what each finding can and cannot tell us. The report brings those findings into one account. The source register lets you examine them. Future editions will add new evidence and, with their agreement, accounts from the people living it.
If you find something wrong or something missing, tell me.
Perhaps you're still looking. Perhaps you found work on different terms. Perhaps you're building something of your own and don't yet know whether it will work.
I'd like to hear what happened, what it has cost you, and what has helped. You don't need to have a happy ending.
We'll agree the words and how you're identified before anything is published. First names only if you prefer.
If you want help with your own situation rather than to go on the record, that is a different conversation. Thirty minutes, off the record, no charge, nothing published.
Reporting on this? Researching it?
The report brings evidence from official statistics, academic studies, employer surveys and other research into one place. Sources and limitations are recorded so you can follow the findings back to their origins. Every entry the report uses has been checked against its original.
Download the report and charts below, or contact me about the evidence and the questions it raises.
Free to use with the citation they carry. PNG for print and social, SVG for editing.
Figure 8. More experience, fewer interviewsDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 9. Fewer interviews than the 28-year-old white manDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 10. Out of work and looking for itDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 4. Out of work and not lookingDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 3. Why 3.4 million 50 to 64 year olds are not looking for workDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 6. Getting back, and what it costsDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 5. Where you live mattersDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 1. Who controls British businessDownload: PNG · SVGFigure 2. When owners let goDownload: PNG · SVG
Cite as: Magnus Wood, In Their Fifties. Trusted to Run It. Struggling to Get Back In. Gen X at Work, first edition, October 2026.
