A couple of months ago a close friend looked me square in the eye and told me, after three years of unemployment, he was “utterly useless”. I noticed the creases around his eyes seemed deeper than before, his posture slightly crumpled and his demeanour awkward.

I blundered in with inane platitudes: “Work isn’t everything”, “you’ve a lovely family”, “you’re a wonderful person.” But he’d stopped listening, and all around him the air of resignation and self-loathing was palpable.

At 53 and with just over 100 job applications made, most of which had gone unanswered, this former high-flyer had given up. He’d ridden the five-stages-of-grief curve – the shock, the denial, the anger and depression, the acceptance, and had consigned himself to a place no-one with his brain and experience should.

He’d tried Ubering but the shame, as he saw it, of former colleagues seeing him as he drew up to give them a ride became too much to bear. His self-flagellation was painful to see, but it struck me that he wasn’t the only over-50 I knew who was struggling to find work at the moment.

I know at least three others – intelligent, widely experienced, skilful men – who now find themselves eager to work but who struggle to ‘be seen’ in the employment marketplace. And they are not alone.

It is right that there is a massive focus on the young and the impact the pandemic has had on them in terms of their employment opportunities, but the over fifties are a rarely talked-about group, with arguably more immediate repercussions from their unemployment.

A report last month from the Centre for Ageing Better outlined that the number of over 50s in work declined in the UK by 181,000 since the start of the pandemic and the 50-64-year-old unemployment rate has increased from 2.8% to 3.4%.

Worse still, this group are more likely than any other to struggle to get back into the workplace meaning they could easily fall out for good losing all the benefits – social, mental and physical - from being in employment.

Some will now be putting less into their pensions, or face the prospect of having to work longer if they do find another job to make up the shortfall, whilst others will resort to Universal Credit in the 10 to 15 years before they reach state pension age.

The same report tells us that 36% of 50 to 69-year-olds feel at a disadvantage whilst applying for jobs specifically because of their age.

According to the World Health Organisation every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes, so there’s a good chance a fair share will be involved in recruitment and make up interview panels. Somehow, the perception that older people will be harder to integrate into the workplace, not be as keen to learn and perhaps are less deserving of a job than young people starting out, had become prevalent in pre-pandemic times and has persisted throughout the period.

And, like so many other -isms, ageism is hard to prove. One over-50 pal who’s sent between 50 and 60 applications in the last year said sometimes, being from a journalistic background, he’d research to see who had been successful and it was always someone with less experience, and with fewer qualifications than him, but younger by a big margin.

But, clearly some people are managing to take their evidence further – in the last year the number of age discrimination complaints to employment tribunals in the UK has gone up 74%. Sometimes we forget that age discrimination laws along with, for example, sexism and racism are set out under the 2010 Equality Act, and age is a protected characteristic. With many employers claiming to have inclusive recruitment processes, age appears still to be a bit of a blind spot.

However, post Brexit, it seems there is a slow and awakening realisation from government and hungry employers alike: without foreign workers, the over 50s are surely an untapped and previously unvalued resource.

Yes, we may have our quirks, yes life has given us huge highs and unbearably crappy lows, yes, we may be keeping an eye out for elderly parents and twenty-something off-spring – but we are no less hungry and desirous to be useful, to be productive and creative. There have been a slew of return to work campaigns by a range of employers aimed at women who have taken time out to bring up their families, but help is needed across the board.

To that end, the UK government, having ignored the over 50s in the last mini budget, have come up with a £500 million plan announced on Monday some of which includes money targeted directly to help over 50s stay in the workplace or help them return to work, and tailored help for those who lost their jobs recently.

Hurrah! I think about messaging my pals. But as I listen to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak on the radio, saying of the plan that the cash would bring about “good, high quality” opportunities for the over 50s, I wonder how that would square with the glut of jobs in this country, many of which are in the gig economy and hospitality sectors that have become available since foreign workers left.

Whether these will be seen as “good, high quality” opportunities by the over 50s I’m thinking about, remains to be seen.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Herald.