Age, sketchy work history, time running out

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This is my first post. I'm 56, have worked on and off for the last 30 years as a Business Analyst, Excel/Access programmer, and various other jobs mostly technically related.

In my earlier years I found it easier to get jobs and most often when I decided to change jobs it was my choice for a better opportunity. As I have gotten older, it seems like my interviewing skills are getting worse and nobody wants to look at you seriously because you have long gaps in your resume where you didn't work.

I know there is age bias here but all I want is a job to be able to support myself and my wife who is disabled. Im excellent at what I do and get very good references from employers.

Right now, we are barely existing, cant get any public assistance because my last job I made six figures. Unemployment is a joke in this state and our food stamp benefits are 16.00 a month. Unemployment is running out and I am scared for us and dont know what to do.

I'm a jack of many tech trades but not a master at any of them. As an Aspie, I have not had your typical career where you stay in one area most of your working career, I had to take what was available at the time just to survive. I think I am paying the price for it now.

I am to old to retrain to do anything else. I feel really lost, stressed and hopeless right now.

There, there. I just came off Unemployment and Food Stamps and back to work in a profession I despise. It made me suicidal for a minute but I'm feeling a little bit better now.

Do I have any advice? Nope. I'm just another sucker dealing with the 9-5 work week. If anything, what you'll garner from this, is you're not alone in your despair and there are others like you.

I feel for you.

Not to depress anyone, but I came to this conclusion before I even knew about AS.

Age discrimination starts at 30.

Employers tend to have two basic schools of thought regarding the hiring of older people.

1. They want to exploit workers, and older workers are more experienced...knowing more about what really matters to them and likely have decided how much junk they will take in pursuit of a "career."

2. They want proven people, and age without corresponding accomplishments indicates something is wrong with the candidate.

One or both apply in most any situation.

At 30, an employer, at the very least, expects you to have some kind of experience to offer. Those with a late start in their career lives, or who made bad choices early on, are racing against a very real clock to prove themselves so that they can convince someone to give them a good opportunity.

At 40, most everyone notices a change as I've noted above, but they may have been skeptical of it starting at 30. They have the same story...."I used to get call backs all the time, now I'm lucky if it happens 1/3 as often."

By 50, most people are effectively unemployable for any "new" opportunity unless their past experience translates well into it or someone is pulling to get them hired.

By 60, it's "game over" for most people. Part time or just coast where you are at until you choose to stop working.

Good/strong economies tip this more in favor of the aged. Bad/weak economies only make this problem worse.

When I hit 40 (prior to learning of AS), I silently and sadly accepted that short of a minor miracle, I might have no hope of getting a "good" job. I was (then) about 8 years past grad school and stuck in a secretarial job. Right now, my best hope of a decent job with dependable benefits hinges on my old boss (who wants me on his team) gets an opening in his office that he can fill (he would have brought me along, but there would have to be an opening for him to have asked for it). Otherwise, nobody really returns calls or asks for interviews, and I hit 45 this year.

At 50, I'll have really no reason to hope that it will ever get better, and I will probably suffer a psychotic break if I hit 60-65 and all of a sudden the economy turns around and we enter a new "golden age" of opportunity for workers.

I've been in dead end jobs all my life. I'm over $100K in non-dischargable debt in the effort to be a "skilled" worker, and still can't do much better.

I am painfully aware of that "career clock" counting down to zero.

My only hope rests on the fact that most subsequent generations of graduates are so stupid about fundamental skills such as English, composition, grammar, math and also lack a solid work ethic that an employer would rather have me than someone younger who can't be counted on to show up and do their job. Of course, that only means I'll have a paycheck, not a good job.

I'm at the beginning of this process. Really, in this culture you need to either succeed or die, and if you can't succeed you need to have the courtesy of dying quickly and quietly.

How about freelance consultancy? It's an avenue a LOT of companies are pursuing right now, as a way of cutting employee costs. OK, you wouldn't have sick or holiday pay, and you'd need to sort out your own taxes and whatnot, but that could be a way of making money for you.

By the sounds of things you have a very wide skill base- not something a lot of folks can offer.

Might be worth looking in to.

Yea, I have been a consultant for the last 8 or 9 years. I get interviews but you know typical Aspie stuff starts happening as much as I try to fight it. No eye contact, not being short and to the point in answers, rambling on, etc. At that point I just feel like walking out. My last job I was hired off of a phone screen.

I have had the opposite experience, as a Gen X employee. I work with a Gen X woman and our boss is a Gen X surgeon. I don't think any of us would work with anyone under the age of 40. When I see Gen Y workers compared to Gen X, my concerns are justified.
Poor productivity, social media addiction, not team centered, keeps looking for the next job, no loyalty.
If I had to leave, I would use the cons of the gen y to get myself hired.
When I think about it, surgeons offices are not about the tech or being social savvy, it's about the connection to people and knowing how to take scary science into typical understanding.
Younger people are alarmists when the get hurt or injured and older patients understand the arthritis is just par for the course.
My father worked on giant printers, specifically the glass lenses -think Xerox. When that industry went digital I told my father to seek medicine, medical lenses-easier transition.
There are big changes happening in medicine this year, the international coding system is being completely overhauled. ICD9 will become ICD10. Medical business managers are scrambling to understand how everything is going to work. Insurance companies are sending teams of people to seminars routinely to learn the basics.
Medicine has a business side and I think there is an appreciation for experienced employees.
Roni

Ive got 30 years of off and on programming experience. Everything from COBOL to dotNet. The problem is that I know a little about a lot of languages but not a lot about 1. Seems the more successful people know a lot about 1 thing. I wish I could have stayed employed long enough to do that.

I've had the misfortune of having to take what was available at the time, learn it on the job and then try to find the next gig just to stay afloat (still doing that). I need to put out some sort of resume but I can't decide how to present myself.

If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would love to know how you handled it and what the outcome was?

So how exactly did you do it you know explain the time you didn't have a job. I am 38, and the only person it seems that isn't having a great life with loads of money, friends, trips and a career. How exactly do you explain a period of unemployment. I don't care about going back to my old profession. I will just double down on adhd medications

This is what gives me hope of being able to find work for as long as I live.

[sarcasm]

I love the failed US education system...it ensures I won't be easily replaced by someone younger.

[/sarcasm]