<p>The problem with being out of the industry for a few years is that employers will assume that one’s skills have decayed, whether or not that is actually true. This is also true of employment in general – long term unemployed people find it harder to get jobs because employers assume that someone who is long term unemployed is at the bottom of the quality scale, whether or not that is actually true (though it is probably more common than in the general population of job applicants for a given type of job).</p>