In this bloody free-for-all of a recession, Americans in their 50s are really taking it hard on the chin.

Their 401(k)s have been cut down to 201(k)s. Their pensions have been frozen, or worse. Their home equity has evaporated just as their kids’ college bills come due. And while younger workers may have been hit harder by unemployment, 50-something Americans who get laid off are stuck in jobless limbo longer than any other age group.

“It’s a real mess,” says Linda Kahn, a 51-year-old San Jose graphic designer who lost her job in early 2009 and recently took a part-time gig at Target “because I was going insane just hanging around the house. On my block alone, three of us in our 50s are out of work. One woman’s dipping into her savings to live. Our houses are worth less than we paid for them. And the two interviews I had went nowhere.”

“Is it because we’re in our 50s?” Kahn wonders. “What else could it be? Someone on the other end is looking at our résumés, doing the math and thinking, this woman’s a fuddy-duddy. I feel like we’ve been put out to pasture. It’s like we’re reaching retirement age, but we’re not ready for retirement.”

It is a demographic squeeze play of historic proportion, with a jobless rate not seen since the Great Depression. Many 50-somethings are having to not just “reinvent” themselves after a late-in-life job loss, but also must “recalibrate” their expectations, says Santa Clara University professor and psychologist ﻿Tom Plante.

“If you lose your job in your 30s or 40s, you have the opportunity to correct the error over time,” Plante says. “Folks in their 50s don’t have that much wiggle room. Plus there’s this sense of embarrassment and shame. Patients I see are suffering in silence. It’s as if the rug has been pulled out from these people at a highly vulnerable time in their lives.”

Peek inside this statistical slaughterhouse: As older Americans headed for retirement, the recession cut into their plans, sending retirement account balances down 32 percent from a peak of $8.7 trillion in September 2007 to $5.9 trillion in March 2009, according to AARP. As the recession kicked in, more than one of every four foreclosures and delinquencies involved Americans age 50 and older, this on top of the decade’s already sharp increase in bankruptcy filings for the 55-and-above set.

Thrifty habits help

Not every 50-something, of course, is in the same predicament. San Bruno marketing director Ron LaPedis, 54, credits his wife with not letting the family go overboard into debt like so many of their peers did. “During the boom times,” he says, “I was scrimping and saving. My wife beat it into my head to live within my means, and it’s paid off.”

His home equity is still intact, and he kept much of his savings in cash, gold and coins, “so I lost maybe only 10 percent of my investments.” Yet he did lose his job at one point, and recalls how during his 18-month job search he “was getting nowhere, submitting résumés into a black hole. Was there an age bias? Yeah. I had people tell me things like, ‘Wow, you have a lot of energy for your — ,’ and they’d sort of stop midsentence.”

Unemployment misery

The jobs picture isn’t getting any prettier for older workers, whose unemployment rate nationally has jumped sharply through the recession, hitting 7.1 percent in February, just shy of the historic high of 7.2 percent in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This economic malaise is proving nearly twice as nasty for them as the one in 2001, with their unemployment rate rising 58 percent in the first year of this downturn.

Some may never find another job: A Pew Economic Policy Group report in April said nearly 30 percent of jobless people 55 or older have been out of work for a year or longer, a higher rate than any other age group.

At 51, Joy Bayler of Saratoga is not quite at that age yet, but she already knows the dark side of lingering unemployment. Her recent work history sounds brutal: “I lost my corporate job in 2006,” she says, “took my stock and started my own business, but that started going downhill; started working a temp job, but lost that in 2008; was unemployed until February 2009, then another temp job; then out of work from May 2009 to February of this year with another temp job, but no benefits.”

Now, after going through her 401(k), “we’re doing what we can to stay afloat. But unless we can get funding from a relative, we’re about to lose our home.”

In a sign of the angst gripping many who see their retirement fading into the future, a poll this year of people ages 44 to 75 found that more than three in five fear depleting their assets more than they fear dying.

Where’s the equity?

“People close to retirement who’d normally have a lot of equity in their homes are either underwater or at least have less of a nest egg,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “And these are the people who looked reasonably good to begin with. For those who didn’t, things are even worse.”

Another factor pressuring older Americans looking for a job or clinging by their fingernails to the one they’ve got is more competition as labor-force participation among peers continues an upward 15-year trend. That, experts say, has been fueled in part by the demise of traditional pension plans. Throw in the stock market’s whiplash and the need to work longer to replenish lost savings and it’s no surprise that Pleasanton career coach Randy Hlavin has been seeing so many clients “desperate for some guidance.”

“Typically,” he says, “they’ve been downsized out of a job or else put into another position with more responsibility for less pay, and that puts even more stress on their lives, financially and emotionally.”

Last year, Santa Cruz technical writer Simone Cox spent nearly eight months job hunting before she found work. In the meantime, she’s seen her three-bedroom townhouse appraise below the price she paid for it six years ago, and watched her health care costs climb as she’s required to pay more of her share than in previous jobs. And her 401(k)? “It’s down a lot,” Cox says. “When I look at my statement, I see more minuses than plus marks.”

Cox, who turns 54 this month, is not alone. According to a Center for Economic and Policy Research study, the net worth of median households in the 45-to-54 age bracket dropped by more than 45 percent from 2004 to 2009. The same study projected that nearly one in three of these so-called “late baby boomers” will need to bring cash to a closing to cover outstanding mortgage and transaction costs if they were to sell their homes.

Job is a ‘lifeline’

That group won’t include Cox, who figures she can’t afford to sell her house in today’s market — or quit her new job, which she considers a “lifeline to health care for me.”

Like many of her fellow 79 million baby boomers, Cox is coming to a sobering realization.

“Retirement is fading further out,” she says. “Now I’m thinking I can’t stop until I’m well into my 60s. But we’re all so understaffed and overstressed, can you really keep up that pace that long? Frankly, I don’t know. For now, I just try and put it out of my head.”

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689.