Yesterday’s unemployment figures are without doubt terrible. The picture as far as older workers are concerned is bleak with fewer than one in four workers between the ages of 50 and 65 managing to get back into work within three months of having been made redundant.

TAEN believes that older people need focused back-to-work support within three months of becoming unemployed. Why so? Because, when someone in their 50s or 60s is out of work, it becomes very much harder to get a job with each month that passes. 

Many people over the age of 50 who are unemployed for six months or more find that age discrimination magnifies the other barriers they face to returning. Eventually, the hurdles become insurmountable.

The number of men aged 50 plus who have been unemployed for between six and 12 months has risen by 68,000 (up 112.5%) over the same quarter last year, making it the highest increase for any group.

This is worrying. Given the pattern of previous recessions when this group bore the brunt of job losses, surely alarm bells are ringing. It is time for the Government to direct more attention to the older age cohorts as well as the young.

All age groups have witnessed a downturn in economic activity over the previous three months.  For the 50 – 65 year age group, economic inactivity rose by 16,000 to 2.3 million.

Yet this age cohort wants to remain in the labour market because of the real financial pressures many are experiencing.  With the increasing size of the cohort as baby boomers start to reach state pension age, many are saying, “We need to work on.”

So what is to be done? Many of the measures the Government is introducing for younger workers could be adapted to support older workers. . Can we really not think laterally and talk about a Future Jobs Fund that aims to support senior career changes?

Plenty of people retrain in later life and then find that they can’t get started through lack of a track record. What about an internship scheme to give 40 or 50 year old new graduates a chance? Why not? Senior Internships: they could be a winner.

Employers are obsessed by the search for ‘relevant experience’. (Look out for those words on job ads – they are everywhere.) Is someone willing to take a shot on potential instead?

Is it too ridiculous to be thinking of work trials for older workers who are keen to switch into a different sector or job function and use their skills differently?

One TAEN supporter recently told us that he had made 1,000 applications in four years and had had only three interviews. He had re-qualified since his last job with a gleaming new MBA to his credit. Employers seemed unwilling to give him an opportunity.

Where is the justice in all this? Older workers need opportunities too. They have ambitions, which even in the good times, prove hard to fulfill.

Of course, the Government is right to give extra support to young jobseekers, but 50 plus workers need help too. The expression sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander seems to me to call out for an inter-generational equivalent: sauce for the gosling is sauce for the goose perhaps?