So my company decided to consolidate operations in El Paso and have closed down the Sarasota office. I am laid off again.
Just this morning I learned that the place I’ve been trying to get in to has gone with a different candidate.
I have forty years of customer service experience, mostly in healthcare positions. I am very discouraged as it is very difficult for an older job seeker to be hired.
Fuck this.
My husband is kind of in the same boat. Laid-off and almost 60 years old. He’s been to a lot of interviews and feels that his age is what is keeping him from landing a job. It would be wonderful if he could just retire, but that ain’t happenin’. We are on the hook for our son’s college loans. He died 2 years after graduating from college. We are co-signers. So we will never be able to retire. 
Forty years of experience is fantastic! I’m in the same boat…I got laid off last Thursday after twenty years. Does your company offer an outplacement service? I’ve heard nothing but good things about mine and I’m waiting to hear back from them.
I’m so sorry to hear about your son. Is there no way to get relief from the student loans?
It can be done. Took me six months but I recently landed a job.
I ended up going through a placement agency. Was working within two weeks of sending them my résumé.
To the OP, how open to relocation are you?
Here is a recent article from Forbes about the possibility of filing for student loan bankruptcy.
Relocate?
I was laid off after ten years in a job in Connecticut back in 2016. After six months of not finding a position I could afford to take my Wife and I initiated Option B, sold the house and moved to Florida. She found an office job doing corporate relocations. I sold appliances at Best Buy.
My background is in Healthcare IT. I found a job processing Medicare Part D applications but that is now gone. I am not relocating again.
These are private loans. The few federal loans went away when he died. I’ve tried everything - even tried our state’s Attorney General’s office.
Thanks for your thoughts - I will most definitely look at the Forbes article.
Sorry OP - didn’t mean to hijack.
Maybe you can get a court to declare you younger.
My largest obstacle at 50 was getting people to believe I’d take a pay cut. I made good money at the job I was laid off from after 20 years, but I’d always been frugal and didn’t need a job paying the same. Nowadays they say to leave off everything but the last job or two, so I basically left off my former job and just mentioned the clerical temp work I was doing while looking - hired almost immediately, despite my age.
My SO is in the same boat. The unemplyment agency pushes him to start working for himself, as a one-person-company. Then they would not have to pay him the unemployment benefits he is entitled to for a few more months.
Being self-employed would mean he would have to start looking for assignments/gigs/projects instead of looking for a steady job.
Of course that would mean no job security, no pension, no health insurance.
The Dutch guy suing to change his age is onto something. He is a known clown and in the Netherlands a sort-of-celebrity/attention-whore. But he HAS a point; age leads to discrimination. Now, if it is unfair discrimination…