50 and Unemployable

I know this has been going on for awhile now, but I am still frustrated by it. Why can’t us baby boomers 50 years old or older, work? I know job’s are very hard to come by nowadays, and people seem to be more pickier about it… but at 50… We have another 20 years of good work life left! ( 25 if they keep upping the retirement age!) I have seen some 50-plus year-olds out work some of the younger workers!

OK, maybe it’s that the middle-agers is all I talk to, because that’s the age I’m in… but it seems a lot of the unemployed are of the baby-boomer age. And not many companies want the “older folks”. Do they not know, this is the most productive age? We know what it means to work for a living…. What it means to earn a dollar.

We still have bill’s to pay. Utility bill’s do not stop coming in the mail just because your over a certain age.

We still would like to eat. The money we put back during our years of work is for when we DO retire, when we do, or even IF we do.

Sure, some of the problem is due to companies taking the jobs out of the country, but the more problem, is after that…. When we need to find another job. We can’t. Oh, they won’t say it… “you’re too old to work for us”… but I know that’s what they think. My husband and I both, interview after interview….and still nothing! After a year and a half to 2 years of interviews and hopes dashed, we’ve all but given up.

My husband was a factory worker, that’s all he knew as far as jobs go. I worked in service type jobs… nursing home, hospital kitchens.. My husband can do more tho…. Re-modeling, construction type jobs, but he has no paper saying so. We are in our 2nd house right now, that was a near dump , and we fixed it up to a near pretty good livable house. We are on a busy street in town, so we was able to a lot of the materials we needed for almost nothing!

People would drive by, see what was going on, and give us the scrapes and left overs from whatever they were doing. It took us all last spring and summer to side the house…. Had to be the most colorful house in town!.. Haha. We had siding in all colors on this house….then we painted over it.. All in one color! Looks great now! Even did a complete re-do on 2 of the rooms inside.

Anyways, I think what I’m saying is… that there are a lot of us baby boomers who are able to, and want to work well past the time our hair has turned silver .