And it is not looking better anytime soon.
My condolences to your freind. Starting over from scratch financially in your 50's is a horrible prospect. I have a buddy out of work for 13 months now who is in the same boat, except he's in his late forties. He's basically screwed, engineering-wise - no one will hire a person of his age.
Which is why my wife and I are hunkering down big-time. We are blessed enough to have a job. We are saving every single thin dime to put together 9-12 months of income in a separate savings account (this does NOT include any retirement funds whatsoever). Bottom line for us - no cable, no cell phone, no magazine subscriptions, no unneeded clothes, and dining out maybe 2 times a month. Looking at how long people are out of work now, it is foolish not to save up.
This is what's killing many of the professional technical fields (not physicians or lawyers or architects, of course, but basically everybody else). When people over fifty are given the boot, where are they gonna go? McDonald's? BK? Wal-mart? Temp firms? Nope. As soon as those folks see the employment history and education, there's no way even an entry level job at Mac's will be offered.
I get a call about once a month from one of my friends from grad school about finding a job. He's been looking for work for two years. We've kept in touch over the years because we're colleagues and friends (I helped him edit his dissertation and he helped type mine). He lost his position at DOE during the Clinton downsizings. Private industry won't hire him because he's too old. He can't get on at Mac's or BK or even ride the garbage truck (he applied for that) because he's too educated. Last time we talked he said he was thinking of going to tech school to learn welding.
I'll tell you, this country is in the process of throwing away everything that made it great. We've thrown away our industrial and technical infrastructure and now we're throwing away intellectual resources. We're going to be left with two markets. One group of people (agents) will sell insurance to the other group, and the ones buying (lawyers) will be suing the agents for misrepresentation (or whatever they can think of).