The great displacement is already well underway?

It's brutal out there. I'm currently 36 years years old. I got laid off in March last year from an outsourcing shop because no work was coming, mostly working with PHP, with some Javascript and python sprinkled in there. I thank the Lord for not having a wife and children, because it would have been so painful watching them suffer because of me, and I thank my parents for helping me float through the tough times.

I got a small leyline around September with a part-time job doing Wordpress stuff for a former client. No days off, zero security, just barely surviving month after the other. Fortunately, things are turning around for me! I'm starting a new full-time job next month. It's pretty well paid too, hybrid role, so I will be able to rebuild my savings, contribute to my pension fund, keep up with my balooning mortgage, etc.

The Lord is indeed merciful! I really hope I can make it work, because I get maybe an interview every few months or so.

I think the most brutal part that no one talks about is just how many scams are out there that target unemployed people. I tried doing freelancing for a while, but I never got paid even once. Contracts don't even matter because I don't have the muscle to enforce them. I almost fell for a bunch of scam job interviews/offers as well. I think I broke into tears after an interview that seemingly went well, then I got forwarded some forms to fill, one of them asking for my credit card information for payment.

It's beyond my powers to help him, but I hope things turn around for the OP as well.

I've been looking for 18 months and the scams are starting to infest everything, especially in the past 3-4 months.

It's getting to where I just bail out of any application that asks for something unusual like the name of my high school or what kind of people I'm attracted to (and I've seen the latter multiple times now).