\n The 4.3% unemployment rate is below both the 10-year average of 4.6% and the 50-year average of 6.1%. For the second month in a row, the official government tally of jobs added<\/a> blew past economists\u2019 expectations. And the most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed hiring surged in March.\n <\/p>\n \n So why are so many people struggling to get hired lately?\n <\/p>\n \n Many of the challenges job seekers face today stem from a yearslong decline in job openings, which has intensified competition for available roles. In response, more people pursued advanced degrees hoping to gain an edge in the market, but for many, that hasn\u2019t materialized. At the same time, major workforce cuts in sectors like the federal government have added even more candidates to an already crowded field.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen we look at that payroll number \u2026 that is just not reflecting what most people\u2019s experience in the labor market today is,\u201d said Kory Kantenga, head of economics at LinkedIn, referring to the April jobs report<\/a>, which indicated employers added 115,000 new jobs that month.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s what\u2019s going on.\n <\/p>\n \n In April, half of the new jobs created came from healthcare, while the other half came from retail, and transportation and warehousing.\n <\/p>\n \n However, \u201cmost people are not looking for jobs as couriers and messengers,\u201d Kantenga told CNN. And even if that were the case, he said it\u2019s unreasonable to expect the pace of job creation on the retail and transportation and warehousing side to be long-lasting, since many roles in those fields are more vulnerable to automation.\n <\/p>\n \n The healthcare sector has remained robust since demand for workers keeps rising as the population ages \u2014 and also because many services can\u2019t easily be automated.\n <\/p>\n \n In other sectors, however, competition has widened while the pool of new postings has not.\n <\/p>\n \n Sophie Duryee, a political economy major who graduated from UC Berkeley last year, dreamed of working in the public sector, ideally in a regulatory compliance role.\n <\/p>\n \n But that\u2019s been an uphill battle. Since reaching peak levels in 2024, federal employment is down by nearly 350,000 as of April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The decline stems from Department of Government Efficiency cuts, and it\u2019s made state and local government jobs harder to land because of increased competition from laid-off federal workers.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cRather than relying on government spending to pad employment data as Joe Biden had done, the Administration is delivering with a proven economic agenda to boost private-sector job growth,\u201d White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement to CNN.\n <\/p>\n ![\"Commuters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2205444503-20260529144121474.jpg\")
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