Consider Michael Gartland, who applied to more than 120 jobs over nine months in 2024. A 58-year-old project manager in Ohio with decades of experience, he kept hitting the same wall: a promising phone screen, an in-person interview, then nothing. The pattern is common enough that researchers and employment attorneys

Older Americans searching for work in April 2026 faced sharply longer spells of joblessness than their younger counterparts, with 34.5 percent of unemployed people aged 55 and older stuck without a paycheck for 27 weeks or more. That share ran roughly eight percentage points above the rate for workers under