Despite firms across East Anglia suffering a skills shortage, the number of men aged 50 to 64 who are out of the workforce is at its highest level since records began, new research reveals.

Rest Less, a jobs website for the over 50s, analysed data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and found that economic inactivity among men in that that age group reached 1.47 million between December 2021 to February 2022.

This is the highest it has been since records began in 1992.

Although there are a number of factors that resulted in men leaving the workforce, including ill health and caring responsibilities, a number are finding themselves out of work and struggling to get a new role.

Stuart Lewis, chief executive of the Colchester-based website, said: "We know that workers in their 50s and 60s are less likely to receive workplace training than their younger counterparts, are more likely to face age discrimination in the recruitment process and once unemployed, this means they are significantly more likely to end up in long term unemployment.

‘With the cost of living soaring, we are particularly worried about people who haven’t financially prepared to stop working yet but have found themselves with no choice but to exit the workforce entirely. This can leave people in a very vulnerable position with years and in some cases over a decade to bridge until they reach the safety net of the state pension.

A 59 year old from Ipswich, who did not wished to be named, revealed that after being made redundant at the end of last year he struggled to find a new position. This was despite him having two degrees and a wealth of experience including as a solicitor, within the charity sector and in higher education.

He said: "I've applied for middle management roles, I've applied for something like 25 or 30 positions, where I've felt my transferable skills would be of use and I found it really difficult to get back into those kind of full-time permanent roles, you just don't seem to get anywhere.

"I need to work, my wife and I cannot reach a position where we can sit back and say okay what should I do for a job to just keep me busy because we still have to work to pay the mortgage and pay the bills.

"A lot of people who used to work in HR and recruitment looked at my CV and they would say great, there's great transferable skills and you're so employable.

"I think there's a number of factors.

"I think age does come into it. I think if you're filling in an application either you have to send in a CV or you fill it in on the application form and if one of your first jobs is in, say 1980 when you were doing x compared to somebody else who said their first job was in 1999, it's no longer about putting your age necessarily on a CV - you can gauge a person's age by probably what their job history is, roughly work out how old they are.

"Is it employers think we want a younger workforce or something?

"Is it that perhaps the people looking at your application are a bit threatened? I don't know if it is that they think 'well if this person comes in they'll go after my job in six months, that they can do my job'.

"I think there’s occasions when people look at it and think 'why isn’t this person applying to be a senior partner in a law firm or looking to be a director somewhere or something'. I think I would answer those people saying I don’t necessarily want to have that pressure anymore, but I would still like to do a good job somewhere with a decent salary.

"I also need to earn and you feel sometimes that you get pushed towards looking at the lower salary positions because that’s all that’s kind of available for you now - it’s a bit soul destroying.

"People say apply to lots of agencies. My personal experience of agencies is they have never worked for me and the only interviews I’ve had over the last four months have been for jobs where the employer has advertised and you apply through the employer following all the procedures they want you to go through.

"Fortunately one of those roles I applied for, I was interviewed for, they’ve offered me a position."