'It totally knocked my confidence,’ says Simon Gibbs. ‘I thought I was doing everything wrong, that I was useless, that I had no value. It was awful.’ Simon was made redundant just four months before his 50th birthday and even now, four years later, the distress he felt after this devastating blow is still palpable.

Thanks to rising employment costs, corporate restructuring and, above all, investment in AI systems that eliminate white collar jobs, more and more men in their 40s and 50s are finding themselves out of work.

But where once they’d have swiftly walked into another role, and even climbed the ladder in the process, now they’re discovering that finding another job – at any level – is much harder than they’d imagined. With the number of vacancies at its lowest level since 2014 (with the exception of Covid-affected 2021) and 2.5 unemployed people for every available job, it’s a brutally tough market.

Recently, former fashion editor Stacey Duguid revealed in the Daily Mail the struggle she and other midlife women are facing in their bid to find work – but men appear to be faring even worse.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 4.3 per cent of working-age women were looking for roles between June and August this year compared to 5.1 per cent of men.

For experienced high-flyers in midlife, the outlook can be particularly bleak. Cost-cutting disproportionately affects older employees, who tend to occupy better-paid positions and are often first to be made redundant.

For men like Simon who have always been their family’s main breadwinner, the emotional consequences of losing their job can be profound.

‘Men attach so much of our identity to our job title,’ says midlife career coach Chris Perkins. ‘Those who’ve spent decades building successful careers, honing the hard-won skills and experience that put them at the top of their game, can find the aftermath of redundancy particularly tough.’

Meanwhile, when it comes to applying for new jobs, many face what Perkins calls ‘thinly-veiled ageism’. He adds: ‘The most common thing I hear when people are rejected is, “We think you’re overqualified”. I can’t think of another instance where getting more for your money is something people would willingly turn down.’

Others are told they might not fit in with a younger team, will become bored or leave as soon as something better comes along – ‘all biased opinions, which don’t stack up against the research showing the average tenure and engagement levels are higher among midlifers,’ he says.

With the state pension age now 67, men who find themselves out of work in their 50s can face years of uncertainty. Here, five men share their stories...

As the breadwinner, when I couldn’t be I doubted my purpose

Now 54, Simon joined HSBC aged 18, eventually becoming a director in marketing and digital customer experience earning £125,000. But after a departmental restructure, he was asked to reapply for his own job – and in the end accepted redundancy.

At first, he was full of energy for the job search – yet the knockbacks kept coming.

‘I applied for around 50 roles but struggled to get past the first hurdle, despite all my experience,’ says Simon, who lives in a four-bedroom semi-detached house in Burgh Heath, Surrey, with his partner Victoria, who runs a painting and decorating business, and their two children, Frankie, 11, and Emilia, seven. ‘My skills were often a perfect match for what was advertised but it felt as though they were finding reasons not to take me on.

‘It was obvious to me there was an issue that wasn’t being mentioned – my age. There was definitely a bias at play.

‘I’d reached the point where I was senior but I didn’t want to become CEO,’ he says. ‘That doesn’t compute to recruiters. They want people who say they’re hungry to do more – so unless you lie, they think you’re not that interested.

‘I also wondered if some of the people doing the hiring also feared I might be better at the job than them. Even if that was the case, I didn’t want to take their job.’

The repeated rejection took a terrible toll. As the family’s main breadwinner, with a mortgage and private school fees to pay, Simon watched savings dwindle, including money inherited from his late mother earmarked for his children’s education.

‘I felt that I existed to provide,’ he says. ‘And when I couldn’t do that, I doubted my purpose.’

He eventually sought therapy and began to consider another path. ‘During lockdown, I’d started buying and selling vintage toys as a hobby. I wondered if I could use my digital expertise to turn it into a business,’ he says.

His company, GibbsySimon Vintage Toys, now sells collectibles to enthusiasts around the world, making him what’s termed an ‘involuntary entrepreneur’, someone driven into self-employment by circumstances.

The business now covers the mortgage and household bills, although he is still drawing on savings. ‘I miss the security of my old salary but now I’m selling things to people who are really happy,’ he says. ‘I never had a feeling like that when I was working in the corporate world.’

I never expected to be a lodger claiming Universal Credit

After splitting from his wife in 2021, Ian Taylor was already feeling emotionally battered – then last year his career was thrown into uncertainty too.

Both conspired to affect the very roof over his head. Having moved out of the family home until it could be sold – a four-bedroom detached property in the Hampshire countryside he’d shared with his ex and two children – Ian rented a room in the home of a retired couple as a stop-gap. ‘I planned to use my share to buy somewhere else for myself,’ he says. ‘Now I can’t do that because I haven’t got a job.’

A senior software test analyst, Ian, 56, spent 25 years working in IT, including roles at major companies such as Hewlett-Packard and defence contractor Raytheon UK. After eight years in his most recent position, he faced redundancy due to restructuring but was handed a short-term contract on £600 a day by a former colleague.

When that ended in October 2025, Ian began looking for his next role. More than a year later, despite sending out at least 50 applications, he is still searching.

‘I’ve had four interviews but nothing’s come of them and the rejection has knocked my self-esteem,’ he says.

‘I know a lot of young people are out of work at the moment but it seems as though the Government is concentrating on them rather than the slightly greyer generation. I sometimes wonder if men of this age are seen as pale, male and stale. On applications, there are boxes to tick if you meet certain diversity criteria and obviously I can’t tick any of them. But I still have a lot to offer.’

He is now claiming Universal Credit, which he describes as ‘humbling’, adding: ‘The last thing I expected at this age was to be living as a lodger on the top floor of somebody else’s house. They’ve been absolutely lovely but it’s like being 18 and coming home from a night out – I’m so aware of not wanting to disturb them.’

He would like to meet someone new but says: ‘Being out of work and unable to afford a place makes it difficult to contemplate starting another relationship.’

Now, rather than wait any longer for a job in IT, he has begun training to become a postman with Royal Mail. ‘It’s minimum wage but I thought, “You need to get back into the job market, whatever the job is”,’ he says.

The only job I could get was as an Asda delivery driver

After 40 years working in banking, earning close to £100,000 a year, Tony Moore, 59, is now delivering shopping for Asda for £13.20 an hour.

Having struggled to find another job in his industry, he is determined to keep working rather than wait for something which matches his skills and experience.

‘I’ve never not worked since the age of 16,’ says Tony, who lives in a three-bedroom detached house in Colchester, Essex, with his wife Joyce, who works in finance for a civil engineering firm.

Tony began his career at merchant bank Hill Samuel and went on to manage departments at several other banks, with stints working in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He later spent 15 years as a self-employed IT contractor, working for major financial institutions including HSBC, Barclays and Santander.

His last permanent role was with a financial tech company, where he earned more than £98,000 a year. But after 18 months, he negotiated a severance package and left in October last year, hoping to find another role in banking.

He has applied for between ten and 20 jobs a month over the course of the year – around 200 in total – but at least three-quarters of his applications have gone unanswered. Others resulted in rejection emails.

‘I was getting automated messages saying I don’t have enough knowledge or experience for jobs I could do in my sleep,’ he says. ‘Reading between the lines, I knew they saw me as too old.

‘After 50, we’re seen as too old to hire but not old enough to retire, so what do we do? I realised I needed something, so I applied for delivery jobs and Asda was the only company to offer me an interview. I’m grateful to have work but I was bringing home roughly £5,500 a month previously and now I’m bringing home £1,500.

‘We’ve switched our mortgage to interest-only, because the payments were £2,500 a month and we’re taking drawdowns from our private pensions.

‘But we’ve still had to make major cutbacks. We used to love eating out but we can’t do that now; we buy all our food at Asda, using my staff discount.

‘I just want to work to live and then enjoy my retirement but this has made that feel very uncertain.’

After earning six figures, I thought what am I doing here?

After 25 years at the same investment management company, Nick Kelsall never imagined he’d find himself out of work, let alone signing on at the Job Centre.

‘I’d never considered claiming benefits before,’ says Nick, who lives in a four-bedroom semi-detached house in Farnborough, Hampshire, with his wife Dawn, a hair stylist, and their two children aged 14 and 16. ‘I’ve always gone to work to earn my money.’

Having started out in the back office, Nick worked his way up to become a chartered wealth manager at Premier Asset Management, earning a comfortable six figure salary at the peak of his career. But in April this year, as the company made restructuring cuts, he found himself on the wrong side of the line.

‘I’d just turned 50, so it was terrible timing,’ he says. ‘I’d always thought I’d have my own exit strategy. I never expected to be told to go and it was a nasty shock.

‘Since then, I’ve applied for more than 50 jobs and found it difficult even to get through to recruiters. AI-powered recruitment systems have made the process bewildering. It’s as if you have to be an AI to speak to their AI, before you can speak to a human.’

He has reluctantly signed on for Jobseeker’s Allowance, partly to get National Insurance credits and protect his pension contributions.

‘Going to the Job Centre for the first time was demoralising,’ he says. ‘I looked at the other people there and thought, “They really need the money – what am I doing here?” I never thought I’d be in that position.

‘The staff are friendly but I felt as though I was being spoken to like a teenager rather than a professional. It was obvious they couldn’t help me find the kind of job I’m looking for; that’s not what they’re there to do.’

They did suggest he visit the M3 Job Club, a career transition charity which offers weekly meetings, expert speakers and practical help with navigating the modern jobs market. He has found invaluable support there. ‘Meeting others in the same boat has been really helpful,’ he says.

With his redundancy payout diminishing, the family now relies on his wife’s much smaller income.

Nick admits the uncertainty is never far from his mind. ‘I hope I find something soon,’ he says. ‘I have plenty more years left to give.’

As a 57-year-old man, it feels very strange not to be working

Mat Loup was optimistic that a recent job interview had gone well. But despite making it clear he was perfectly happy to take a less senior position than he’d previously held, he was still told: ‘You’re too experienced.’

At 57, he is discovering that decades of professional experience can actually make it more difficult to find a job. ‘If you tell recruiters you’re happy to step down a rung, they often don’t believe you, which makes things difficult,’ he says.

He worked in a range of jobs and sectors there for 18 years until, after being made redundant, he returned to Britain with his wife in November last year.

Here, he found a contract through his professional network – but that came to an end in July and he is once again searching for work.

‘I spent most of last year looking, because I knew I was moving back to the UK and I’ve been looking again since April,’ says Mat, who lives in a three-bedroom house in Winchester with his wife, who works in media analytics and content marketing. They have two grown-up children, a daughter aged 22 and a son, 25. ‘The market is very tough right now,’ he says.

At his career peak, Mat was earning more than £100,000.

He has some savings but says: ‘The household income dropped significantly when my contract ended and my wife’s contract is due to end in December, so I feel the time pressure.’

He is investing time and money into learning new skills, including AI, but the job hunt is an emotional rollercoaster. ‘Some days you can be full of energy, optimism, applications, networking – a sense there’s light at the end of the tunnel,’ he says. ‘Then other days are terrible, when rejections come through or networking approaches are met with silence.

‘It’s a very lonely experience, because it is just you going through it. I have friends and a partner who want to support me but I’ve been keeping to myself – sharing is too miserable.

‘There’s a loss of identity, too. A few times I’ve met someone in a social setting and they’ll inevitably ask, “What do you do?” I’ve had to say I’m between jobs but it feels awkward. As a man, it feels very strange not to be working.’