When Layoff Anxiety Is Really Identity Anxiety

Job loss after 50, especially if it’s unexpected, can bring worries beyond the loss of a paycheck

Kathleen Davis,

AARP

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Published June 18, 2026

an illustration of a man looking down in the center of a cut out work badge

Rob Dobi

Key takeaways

Losing a long-held job can trigger identity struggles, but reconnecting with interests, using networks and exploring flexible work can help open new paths.
Older workers can face hurdles such as outdated job-search skills, employer assumptions about salary and a sense of being lost in crowded applicant pools.
Job loss after age 45 often leads to longer searches for new employment. Many workers age 55-plus stay unemployed for 27 weeks or more, and 24 percent of those 50 to 65 never find another full-time role.

Leslie Friday, 48, from Rockport, Massachusetts, says that when she was laid off from the communications and marketing job that she had held for a decade, she had a bit of an identity crisis. She thought, If I can’t be this particular person at this organization, who am I? Eventually, she says, “I had to convince myself I’ve never been that person. Nobody is an organization.”

It was, Friday says, an “evolving realization” that took place over her yearlong job hunt. She eventually found another full-time role in her field, on the one-year anniversary of her layoff. But her road back to full-time employment was hardly easy and took many unexpected turns.

She’s far from alone. In fact, many later-career professionals are in a more difficult position. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that 24 percent of employees 50 to 65 years old who are laid off never find another full-time job. And even for those who eventually do find a new role, as Friday did, their period of unemployment is likely to be long. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that many job seekers 55 and older are likely to be out of work for 27 weeks or more.

Need help with your job search? AARP is holding a LinkedIn Live at 10 a.m. June 23 (your local time) on "Job Loss: Smart Steps to Regain Stability and Confidence." And AARP and Indeed are collaborating on a career hub for older adults.

A changing job-search landscape

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Many factors can cause this late-career employment crisis, says career coach Phoebe Gavin. Workers who lose their jobs after age 45 are more likely to have been in their roles for several years. That means they could have a steeper learning curve in how to find a job in the current environment, which has changed dramatically in just the past two years, Gavin says. Salary expectations — or, at least, how much employers think you’ll want — can influence decisions too, she says: “Even if someone is very experienced and is desired for a role, sometimes companies are less willing to spend the money that is appropriate to compensate someone for their deep experience.”

Eilene Zimmerman, 62, is an author and the cocreator of the Substack publication Unplanned Pivot, which focuses on navigating career changes. She pivoted in her own career, pursuing a master’s degree in social work at 53. She also works as a therapist and social worker in the emergency department at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. She says her clients who are in their 50s or older are struggling with a job-search landscape that looks nothing like it used to. “The things that used to work for them, even five years ago, don’t seem to be working now,” she says. “They feel like they’re one of a thousand applications in the first two minutes. They’re not sure how to stand out when there are fewer jobs, there are fewer calls for their skills.”

Those challenges can translate into significant financial concerns. Gavin points out that her clients who are in their 50s or older are the ones most stressed about money. “There’s a lot of panic around the financial part of it in the short and long term,” she says. This is a time in life when it’s “very important to still be earning at a high enough level that you can retire with dignity and comfort,” she explains. “It’s also a time when you have a lot of responsibilities: kids who are in college, you’re trying to pay off the mortgage.”

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But what lies beneath those financial fears is also a loss of identity. “There’s a feeling of Am I still relevant?” Zimmerman says.

Work is not your family

Part of why job loss later in one’s career can hit differently is that older workers are more likely to stay at one job for a long time, as Gavin notes. Consider that 52 percent of employees 60 and older have been with their current employer for 10 or more years, which is more than double the rate for workers in their late 30s (21 percent), according to BLS data. The longer you are at a company, the more likely you are to identify with it.

“The cultural expectation was: If you give that much of yourself, your time, your effort, energy and excellence to a company, they’re going to take care of you,” Gavin says. When the job ends, some people can feel betrayed that the company didn’t keep its end of the bargain.

Friday experienced that feeling exactly. She felt a deep sense of loyalty to her company, which, she says, had talked about employees being part of a family. As a result, she felt betrayed when she lost her job, she says: “It was a grieving process, and many of those different stages of grief are what I had to go through in order to really get my head in the right space to find my next opportunity.” Ultimately, she says, her friends and family helped her gain confidence and remember the layoff wasn’t personal. Interviewing for new roles helped, too. “I gained more confidence and understood … I can do this. I got this. It’s just persistence and timing and the market,” Friday says.

Now she sees it as a red flag when a company talks about being a family. “Nobody’s a family at work. I’m looking forward to getting to know my coworkers, but the only family that I have lives in my house under my roof,” she says. “I will have more perspective [about work] and distance. I feel a little bit less naive to the world.”

In addition to the sense of loyalty — and betrayal — that can come with a long tenure at a company, there also can be a deep enmeshment of personal identity. Zimmerman says it was particularly difficult to change the way she thought of herself because she identified so intensely with her job. Even after years of being a therapist, she says, she would introduce herself as a journalist who also does social work.

“What I learned through this process is, if you put all your identity eggs in one basket, it can wind up really hurting you in the end,” Zimmerman says. “I overidentified [as a writer]. There wasn’t room for me to embrace another identity. I had to really work to understand, No, I’m more complicated than that. It took a long time to give up this thing that I held on to so tightly.”

Gavin says some younger workers have a different perspective on their careers and employers. “Folks who are younger have more experience of the way that employers work now, where they treat employees as very disposable, and so [younger workers] are starting to treat employers as more disposable,” she explains. “They’re being more self-focused as it relates to putting together their careers.”

How to figure out who you are — and what’s next

So, what does it look like to be more self-focused in a later chapter of your career? You don’t necessarily need to go back to college in your 50s, as Zimmerman did.

Gavin suggests first taking a step back to rediscover yourself. Figure out who you are outside of work by exploring your interests and hobbies and reconnecting with your friends and family. “It opens up your willingness to see yourself differently, and that’s really important, because this is a season that requires a bit of reinvention and reframing,” she says. Gavin encourages clients to use their networks. “You never know who your people know and if you would benefit from being introduced to their network. The only way to make that happen is to let people know.”

She also suggests breaking out what you liked about your former job into smaller pieces to understand what you really miss about it beyond the prestige and the paycheck.

While on that journey of self-discovery, you might need to supplement your severance or buyout package. Gavin suggests considering contract positions, consulting work and entrepreneurship as flexible options that also can help you dodge some of the age-discrimination-related challenges that later-career folks can encounter.

Finally, rediscovering yourself after a job loss may lead you to a totally different path, and inspiration may come from the most unexpected places. For Zimmerman, her volunteer work with homeless kids and the sudden death of her ex-husband served as epiphanies to pursue social work. For Friday, it was a part-time job at her local garden center. It was humbling and came with a huge pay cut compared to her previous professional role, but working outside gave her a new perspective and was a needed reprieve from hours spent applying for jobs.

Now, as she starts in her new position, she’s taking that fresh perspective with her.

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.