How to bounce back from REDUNDANCY

Advice on navigating the emotional and practical impact

- CAROLINE BLOOR

Redundancy in your 40s or 50s can feel daunting - but it's also an opportunity to rethink what you truly want from work and life. After years of building careers and raising families, many women reach a natural point of reflection: 'What next for me?'

While redundancy can leave you feeling professionally and emotionally adrift, more midlife women are framing it as a turning point that, with the right support, can lead to something better.

There were around 456,000 UK redundancies between September 2024 and August 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics - 38% of them women. But research shows midlife women are highly resilient - '60% aged 50 to 59, who were made redundant in the past three months, have found new work or become self-employed, making them almost as quick to bounce back as 25 to 34-year-old women (at 63%),' says Dr Karen Hancock, economist at the Centre for Ageing Better.

At any age, redundancy can feel deeply personal. But for midlife women, it often hits when they are navigating menopause, and managing teenagers and ageing parents, says career and confidence coach Dr Claire Kaye (drclairekaye.com). 'It's also at a time when women's identity sits around their career. If you can, depersonalise it and see the “gift”,’ she continues.

Change consultant Eleanor Tweddell, author of Another Door Opens (£16.99, PB, Bonnier Books), says, 'We fear change so much that often we fail to see the opportunities it can bring. When we open up to embrace change, we find there is more opportunity than things to be afraid of.'

As Claire says, 'Many later say redundancy was the best thing that happened to them - it helped them reflect and find work they love.'

'I used to think success was about stability'

Rani Karim, 43, a lawyer based in Nottingham, was made redundant from her job as a paralegal just over a year ago, in November 2024.