Empower Over 50
Empower Over 50
Honest, grounded conversations about life after 50. Hosted by Max Farnon, this podcast is for anyone navigating job loss, career reinvention, identity shifts, financial uncertainty, or the quiet that follows a long career.
Max lost his job at 56 and began documenting what starting over actually felt like — not the polished version, but the raw, uncomfortable, deeply human reality. What grew from that honesty became Empower Over 50: a growing community built on real talk, genuine connection, and the understanding that you are not alone in this.
Each episode is an audio deep dive into the previous day's video from the Empower Over 50 YouTube channel. Watch the original videos at youtube.com/@empowerover50, then take the deeper conversation with you wherever you go. Topics include job searching after 50, dealing with ageism, rebuilding confidence, managing finances through a career transition, relationships, and finding purpose in the second half of life.
No motivational speeches. No frameworks. No hustle culture. Just honest conversation about what it actually takes to start over.
New episodes every Tuesday and Friday at 5:30am ET.
Visit empowerover50.com and join the conversation.
Empower Over 50
56% of Workers Over 50 Are Forced Out. Here’s How It Could Happen To YOU.
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Most people believe retirement is something you choose.
You work for decades, reach your late 50s or 60s, and decide when you’re ready to step away.
But for many, that isn’t how it happens.
In this video, we break down the reality facing workers over 50. Backed by data from the Urban Institute, ProPublica, AARP, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the truth is uncomfortable but important. More than half of workers over 50 experience a job loss before they ever choose to retire.
This isn’t just about layoffs. It’s about being performance managed out, reorganized out, or quietly replaced.
If you’ve felt something shifting at work, this will help you understand what’s really happening and why.
You’re not alone in this. Not even close.
#Over50 #AgeDiscrimination #JobLossAfter50 #CareerChangeOver50 #employment crisis #LifeAfter50
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Empowerable 15 now. Stand up top on take your bow. Feel the rhythm, feel the power. This is your triumph on an hour.
SPEAKER_00Most people think retirement is a choice. You work your career. You hit your late 50s, maybe 60s. You decide when you're ready. You leave on your own terms. That's the story we've been told. It's not true for most of us. A study that tracked American workers for over 20 years found that 56% of people over 50 lose their long-term job before they choose to retire. More than half. Pushed out, performance managed out, reorganized out. Shown the door. We don't retire. We get retired. And nobody tells you that until it happens to you. Let me give you the numbers because they matter. That 56% figure comes from the Urban Institute of ProPublica. They followed tens of thousands of workers from the early 50s onward, tracking what actually happened to them. Not what they said would happen, not what they hoped for, what they lived through. 56% experienced an employer-driven separation before they retired. AARP just published fresh data this year in 2026. They surveyed over 1600 workers, aged 50 and up. 22% say they are currently being pushed out of their jobs because of their age. One in five. Not in the past, right now, while they are still working. Now here is the part that should make you sit up. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracked workers aged 55 to 64 who lost long-held jobs. Only 55% of them were working again a year later. For workers over 65, more than half had stopped being counted in the labor force entirely. That is the brutal maths. When you lose your job after 50, there's roughly a coin flip chance you will ever hold another real one. I have created a community page on my website. Please consider joining. Scan the QR code. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, that cannot really be systematic. Companies can't just do that. They do. And we have all the receipts. IBM, one of the biggest, most respected tech companies in America, ProPublica investigated them and found that they had pushed out an estimated 20,000 American workers aged 40 and over since 2014. That is roughly 60% of all the American jobs IBM cut during that period. Workers over 40 cut disproportionately. How did they do it? Ranking systems had quietly flagged older workers as lower performing. Layoffs reclassified as voluntary retirement, paperwork that should have disclosed who was being let go conveniently not filed. In October of last year, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled IBM broke federal law by blocking 20,000 laid-off workers from joining together to sue. In Connecticut, 61-year-old former IBM manager won a $1.5 million jewelry verdict against them for age discrimination. This is not one bad manager. This is corporate strategy. And it is not just IBM. The EEOC found that during the mass layoffs wave of 2022 through 2025, workers over 40 across the entire tech industry were about one and a half times more likely to be cut than younger colleagues. One and a half times industry wide. It's documented, it is in court, it is in settlements, it is happening right now. So this is so widespread, so documented, so provable in court. Why does it not feel like a scandal? Why is it not on the news every week? Two reasons, and they are ugly. The first is that the system that is supposed to catch this is not working. The EEOC is the federal agency that enforces age discrimination law. In fiscal year 2024, they filed seven lawsuits under the Age Discrimination Act. Seven in a country of 330 million people, it is the lowest number in decades. If you lose your job at 58 because of your age and you go to the EEOC for help, you are effectively on your own. The second reason is quieter, but just as bad. When a 62-year-old loses a job and cannot find another one, eventually they stop looking. When that happens, the government stops counting them as unemployed. They become not in the labor force. It sounds like a choice. It sounds like retirement. It is not a choice. It is surrender, dressed up as retirement. I have created a first things first guide to the first six things you must do if you lose your job. Scan the QR code. Which means the real number of people over 50 who have been pushed out and never get back in is higher than anything you have just heard. The system is designed to make them disappear. I am one of the 56%. I lost my job at 56. I was offered either being put onto a PAP or taking severance. Wrong conversation. Not really an option. That day, I became a statistic myself. That was 10 months ago. I spent the first month thinking I'd misunderstood what happened. The second, thinking it was my fault. By the third, I started reeling. That is when I found these numbers. And what hit me was not that I had been wronged. What hit me was that I was not special. This is the standard outcome. This is what happens to most of us. I am not telling you my story because it is unique. I am telling you because it is ordinary. Because if you are 52, 56, 60, and you have got a feeling that something is shifting at work, that your manager is not making eye contact the way they used to, that you are suddenly getting feedback you have never gotten before, you are probably not imagining it. You are probably seeing exactly what it looks like. If this video found you and something in it sounded familiar, I want you to hear this clearly. It is not your fault. You are not paranoid, you are not washed up. You are not the problem. The problem is documented. It is in federal court rulings. It is in AARP surveys. It is in BLS data. The problem has receipts. What you do with that information is up to you. But you are not alone in it. Not even close. I talked about the other side of this. What happens when you lose your job and your health insurance disappears in last Monday's video? I will link it right here if you want to keep going. Cheers.
SPEAKER_01Feel the rhythm, feel the power. This is your triumph on the hour.