There is a constant contradiction between governments vague handwringing over the number of the unemployed and the fact that many people are overlooked because they have hit 50. In a recent survey, half of HR professionals said they would be reluctant to put anyone over 55 on a shortlist.
Of course it’s not supposed to work like that but there are plenty of ways of avoiding the direct accusation. My favourite – too experienced for the job. A back-handed compliment in this context. Your dismissal from all consideration is secured.
In a recent Telegraph article, Sarah Young had ran the gauntlet of sending her CV into faceless online space. Her count last year was 300.
“I’ve worked for years in the fintech industry in both large global corporates and small startups, but in spite of applying for over 300 roles through LinkedIn and my networks, I’ve had no joy.
“When you apply for jobs online, you don’t get to speak to anyone, and if your CV doesn’t get through the auto ATS ( applicant tracking systems) process, you’re stymied – and I can only assume that age is the huge barrier.”Sarah Y
Over the years there have been some wonderful films looking at the problems confronting this age group. From the corporate boardroom where careers are clinically terminated, to the desperate job hunt that follows, and finally to the rare second chance that proves what we’ve known all along that if given half a chance many older people could be part of the economic decline that the West is experiencing.
The Corporation: Death by HR Playbook
The French film “The Corporation” opens with what might be the most terrifying horror scenario for today’s 50-something professional: a roomful of bright-eyed HR executives being trained in the Alps on the fine art of “letting go of The Unwanted Ones.”
The lead character is an ambitious young HR professional, groomed by her business school mentor to implement the ultimate cost-cutting measure: sidelining older employees regardless of their performance. The goal is transparent – lower the wage bill by pushing out those commanding higher salaries due to their years of service and experience.
The execution is masterful in its cruelty. The company offers a “sideways move” carefully engineered to be impossible for the target to accept without devastating their family life. It’s termination by technicality – a corporate execution that leaves no fingerprints.
When one such employee responds by leaping from the company’s roof, our HR wunderkind begins her transformation from corporate clone to whistleblower. The film traces her awakening as she realizes she’s become the handmaiden to an institutional ageism that hides behind euphemisms like “restructuring” and “right-sizing.”
Most disturbing is how familiar these tactics feel. They’ve become so normalised that we barely raise an eyebrow when another 55-year-old colleague mysteriously decides to “pursue other opportunities.”
Le Couperet (The Axe): Turning the Tables
If “The Corporation” shows us the clinical execution of careers, Costa-Gavras’s “Le Couperet” reveals the desperate aftermath. After two years of unemployment, our protagonist – a chemist played with haunting effectiveness by Jose Garcia – decides that in a jungle, one must become predatory to survive.
His solution is both logical and monstrous: eliminate the competition. Literally.
He places a fake job ad for his exact profession, collects résumés from his box number, and methodically starts killing candidates more qualified than himself. It’s a grisly metaphor for what the job market often feels like to the middle-aged applicant – a zero-sum game where only one will survive.
The film’s genius lies in making us uncomfortably complicit with Bruno’s reasoning, if not his methods. Many viewers will recognize the humiliation he endures: the slight intake of breath when asking former colleagues to serve as references; the patronizing questions from interviewers half his age; the knowledge that a single misstep in the interview dance means another month of wondering how to make the mortgage payment.
One scene captures the power imbalance perfectly: Bruno sits across from an interviewer who asks aggressive questions while barely glancing at his CV. In that moment, we understand that job interviews aren’t assessments – they’re exercises in dominance. One set of people hold the keys to another person’s economic survival, and they know it.
As Bruno says with bitter clarity: “No job. No money. No life.”
The film forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: our economic system has created conditions where desperation isn’t just possible – it’s practically inevitable. When we treat human beings as disposable assets, should we really be surprised when some of them refuse to go quietly to the scrapheap?
The Intern: What Could Be
Robert De Niro’s character in “The Intern” inverts the norm. Here, a 70-year-old widower becomes a “senior intern” at a hip e-commerce startup, abiding his time and lip until he can prove his worth.
The film is hopeful, perhaps naively so, but it does something crucial: It shows what could be possible if we shelved our prejudices. suspended. De Niro’s character brings qualities that his younger colleagues lack – patience, problem-solving skills honed over decades, emotional intelligence, and the perspective that comes from having seen an array of problems from the inside..The tragedy is how rarely this happens in reality.
The Slow Awakening
There are signs, however faint, that the tide is beginning to turn. As labor markets tighten in certain sectors, some companies are rediscovering the value of experience. Programs specifically targeting “returnships” for mid-career professionals are sprouting up, albeit too slowly for the millions currently sidelined.
The demographic reality is also forcing a reckoning. As populations age across the developed world, the economic folly of discarding workers in their 50s only to face labor shortages a decade later is becoming apparent even to the most bottom-line focused executives.
But this awakening is glacially slow, and for those currently caught in the purgatory of mid-career unemployment, it offers cold comfort. The psychological wear and tear depicted so vividly in these films continues to play out in real living rooms across the Western world.
The Real Cost
These films strip away the corporate-speak and show us the human reality: the marriages strained to breaking point, the dignity slowly eroded, the quiet desperation of talented people wondering if they’ve become invisible
What these films collectively reveal is that ageism in employment isn’t just an individual tragedy – it’s a societal failure with enormous economic costs. We invest decades in developing human capital, only to arbitrarily decide that after a certain birthday, that investment should be written off.
More insidious yet is that this waste is now taken for granted. We accept without question that a 58-year-old executive might never work again, that their knowledge and capabilities somehow evaporated overnight. We watch them drain retirement accounts meant for their 80s to survive their 50s, and we call it progress.
