I wouldn't recommend learning stuff with the hope of finding a job that uses it. I feel like you should spend some time, look around at various tech projects and languages and applications, etc etc. Find a job you want like "I'd like to work for Amazon S3, it seems really interesting." or something and then figure out what you need to do to get it, training or otherwise. I feel like that would be more fulfilling and have a better chance of success.

If you have a 39 year old career, that means you are likely just a few years from retirement.
A company that hires you will likely hire you for skills you have experience with - not any new skills you have no experience with. Those jobs will, unfortunately, go to young grads.
My recommendation is to take one of the skills you have plenty of experience with and get a formal training in it. Even if it bores you, it will likely boost your employment probabilities more than anything new and interesting like the cloud. Because it is new, companies will be looking for young people who (a) are cheap, and (b) hopefully will stay after gaining experience, so the company can take advantage of that experience down the road.

Sorry if this wasn't what you wanted to hear - I wish things were different, but we old timers aren't all that attractive for things we don't have experience with.

thats pretty damn obnoxious of you, douchebag.

From what I've been reading in the business press over the last couple of years, when folks lose their jobs in their 50s or later, they're screwed for the rest of their life. More than likely, he'll never work again as a professional or in any white collar job.

That is also a reason why disability claims with Social Security have been sky rocketing these last couple of years - older people unable to work so they go for early retirement or disability if they are too young.

It's a crying shame, too.

Embezzle as much as you can from your current employer. You'll end up in a minimum security federal prison. You get three hots and a cot, plus free health care. There's a gym and a library. It's probably better than you'll get in your retirement. Our country is more willing to spend money on its criminals than its elders, might as well take advantage of that.

There are exceptions, but those are for people with very specific skill sets that younger people are unlikely to have, like Cobol, Fortran, CICS, Unicos, VMS...

QFT. Greedy bastards sold us down the river with their entitlement programs. "Sure, let's setup these pyramid schemes and go into insane levels of debt. Our children & grandchildren wont mind living in poverty so we can live beyond our means!"

We should just refuse to pay/bailout their insanity. We didn't make this mess.

... for $10/hr no benefits, or mandatory 80 hour per week overtime, or intern unpaid jobs, or "pay you in shares" startups, or ridiculously over specified.

Pay in peanuts, you get monkeys.

I see no evidence of an actual shortage.

I know its discouraging, but just trying to keep it real. Its not 1999 all over again. Or even 2004.

It is still used by many major corporations, and many not-so-major ones.

COBOL, like the Mainframe, has had almost as many funerals as it has birthdays...

I was just kicking out one idea, because we don't know a ton about his competence or other qualifications.

I figured that as a community, we were collectively trying to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall.

That's pretty much the ultimate ""your own fault" approach. There is a fairly widespread subset of th epopulation that thinks that any ailment is the sick person's fault.

Perhaps the giving up happens when the person's brain isn't working as well as it used to. Sometimes stuff like age happens, and despite our best efforts, no one get out of here alive.

Though it is appealing to think that as long as I do Sudoku, I'll never die or become senile........naahhh, I hate frickin' Sudoku!

That's HIGHLY Insightful.

When I was training WIA students who were highly "experienced" at being (repeatedly) unemployed due to the economy I learned a lot from them.

Take the LONGEST most useful course you can AND see if the school will call multiple courses some "hyphenated" SINGLE course for you. If your Unemployment will last through this, ensure your expressed preferences via the unemployment office "protect" you against being coerced to take jobs you don't really WANT. A great way is to pick a distance from home which excludes potential employers.

Milk it, get the papers, and use the time. You might even channel schooling into obtaining a teaching gig. Schools KNOW students take courses they could probably teach. They get paid so they are fine with that.

Make faculty friends! It's a club and it's a club where being an Old Fucker is a sign of stability! (I'm an Old Fucker, BTW.) Use that human networking kung-fu young noobs think they don't need because they are Unique Snowflakes. You know TEAM behaviours.

We work to serve our elite masters who milk us like cattle, so use every opportunity the system gives you. THEY DO. It's every man for himself.