I am an older guy in laid off April 15.
I need new skills because I was too pigeonholed at WD. Jeez most people were/are. So now I see these cool jobs for interns that I'd love to do just to learn even though my pay would be a third of what it was. That's better than the zero it is now. But I don't have a shot.
This isn't a WD thing it is everywhere. Its great if you have a kid you want to get a headstart working for a Fortune 500 employer but s---s if you have to make insurance payments that deplete all your future retirement money and you can't get a job because you don't meet generic current day requirements. If a job search is to take 2 years we are doomed because new software and the next Agile/Lean/whatever will come and we will be clueless.