This is the skill you need if you want a job in the highest-paying industries

You’re over 50; you worked for the same company for years; you got laid off — what is the reality of the job market? The first thing that pops into an over-50 mind is age discrimination. While there’s no denying hiring discrimination, compensation and skills may have more to do with it than age.

Here’s a look at the compensation issue — writes: “I’ve been a financial analyst for a major auto supplier for 25 years. I was making $90K when I was laid off nine months ago. I’ve had two job offers, one for $70K and one for $65K. I turned them down because I can’t afford to take that kind of pay cut. Don’t companies value my 25 years of experience?”

The issue here is John’s perspective of experience. It doesn’t take 25 years to develop proficiency in any profession. At most, it takes five. What John calls experience is really seniority. He’s had five years of experience five times. His compensation at his former employer also included numerous merit raises. These increased his salary well beyond that of the going rate for an experienced financial analyst (i.e. one with five years on the job). A prospective employer won’t pay him for seniority acquired at another company. It will pay him the market rate for an experienced financial analyst.

Job hunters, regardless of age, need to be realistic about compensation. A quick look at online job postings provides a sense of what jobs are paying. The resources at salary.com are helpful and localized — there are free and premium services; many online job sources offer compensation information, too.

If you find you were overcompensated versus the market, it’s a bitter pill that must be swallowed. (In John’s case, holding out for a $90K job in a $65-70K market makes no sense.) Lifestyle adjustment isn’t easy. You’ll need to develop a budget and stick to it. Also, if the budget is really tight, consider taking a part-time job on weekends to make ends meet.

While I’m not a proponent of stating expected compensation in a cover letter, I’ll make an exception for the over-50 group. Putting the realistic compensation level in your cover letter shows the employer that you’ve done your homework. Doing so also diffuses the awkward discussion that could develop when you’re asked what you were making.

Skills can be a question with the over-50 job seeker, too. Unlike doctors, accountants and lawyers who are required to stay up to date on their education throughout their careers, most people don’t take additional courses after their formal education ends. Their employers may send them to seminars covering things that the employers need them to know, but they seldom advance their education on their own.

It’s never too late to start the process. Grab some course catalogs from local colleges and universities and look at the curriculum in your field. I’d bet there are significant changes from “back in the day.” Identify the holes in your skill set and enroll in a few night classes to fill them while you’re conducting your job search. You can add the classes to your resume.

The coursework will provide an added benefit — they’ll involve using the Internet to do research. This will come in handy during your job search because you’ll need to find information on prospective employers and industry topics when preparing for interviews.

Use night classes as networking opportunities, too. Most of your classmates are working and could provide contacts. Many of the night-course teachers hold day jobs; add them to your network.

One skill that can really help is proficiency in Microsoft Office. I can’t tell you how many over-50s I’ve encountered who can barely type a letter/report, much less do basic Excel or PowerPoint. Community colleges and numerous tech schools offer courses at reasonable cost.

Do you speak HTML? Is Java your second language? Can you navigate PHP, .net or C++?

If you said yes to any of these questions, you have a huge advantage in terms of landing a high-paying job, new research shows.

According to an analysis of 26 million job postings by job market analytics firm Burning Glass, about half of the jobs paying $57,000 or more per year are in occupations that commonly require applicants to have at least some computer coding knowledge. In fact, on average, jobs requiring coding skills pay $22,000 more per year than jobs that don’t.

You’re probably at least passingly familiar with some of the coding languages out there: CSS, JavaScript and maybe even specialty languages like Ruby on Rails or Python.

In 2015, seven million job openings were in occupations that value coding skills, which corresponds to 20 percent of what Burning Glass calls “career track” jobs, or those that pay a national living wage of at least $15 per hour.

But coding isn’t limited to just programming jobs. Information technology (IT) specialists, data analysts, artists and designers, engineers and scientists usually require some level of coding knowledge within different coding programs, as Burning Glass stated in its report.

Now, if you have no clue when it comes to code, don’t worry, you could always enroll in a bootcamp. But if you have enough code knowledge, you may want to look into a job at one of these five high-paying industries.