{"id":7584,"date":"2025-07-13T21:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T21:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/7584\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T21:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T21:54:08","slug":"the-reason-its-so-impossible-to-find-work-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/7584\/","title":{"rendered":"The reason it’s so impossible to find work right now."},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 2021, Zia graduated from the University of Michigan\u2013Dearborn with a degree in software engineering. With an internship under his belt, he had no shortage of job opportunities, and he landed a contract coding gig in January of 2022. It was good work, for a year and a half, until he got laid off in mid-2023. After taking a month to figure out what he wanted to specialize in, Zia decided that he\u2019d go for the types of app- and site-building jobs that had been so plentiful<\/a> when he was in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I started applying to jobs, and honestly, I don\u2019t even know what to say after that,\u201d the now\u201329-year-old Pakistani American coder told me, calling from his parents\u2019 house in Taylor, Michigan. \u201cHere I am right now, still applying to jobs two years later.\u201d (Zia is a pseudonym; I\u2019ve granted them in this article to people who didn\u2019t feel like they could otherwise speak freely without disrupting their ongoing job searches.)<\/p>\n

Software engineering used to be a sure bet. \u201cLearn to code<\/a>\u201d is, after all, used as a pejorative against people in famously less stable fields, like journalism<\/a>. But for the past few years, it hasn\u2019t seemed to matter whether you did everything \u201cright\u201d\u2014choosing the right major, getting the right experience, even spending decades in a field. Even after perfecting their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and sending out<\/a> hundreds<\/a> (if not thousands<\/a>) of applications<\/a>, people on the job market today, of all ages, in all fields, are finding that they can\u2019t even land an interview, forget about full-time employment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just barren out there,\u201d said a 42-year-old New Yorker and longtime artificial intelligence product manager whom I\u2019ll call Dave. Yes\u2014even the supposedly booming<\/a> field of A.I. is not hiring so madly these days. \u201cI lost my job about a year ago at a company that had some issues, and I\u2019ve put out so many applications,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

LaVonne Pepe, a former senior adviser on gender-based violence at Housing and Urban Development, was laid off from the advocacy nonprofit Color of Change in 2023. \u201cI\u2019d applied to literally hundreds of jobs, because the market was bad then,\u201d she said. Pepe finally landed the job with HUD last fall\u2014only to have her federal position terminated<\/a> in February. Now she\u2019s back on the job market and \u201cit\u2019s arguably worse now,\u201d she told me. \u201cBack then, more jobs were available in the field that I\u2019m in. Now the funding landscape for those organizations is horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

On TikTok, a burly Gen Z New Yorker who goes by \u201cRizz Carlton\u201d earned outsize attention for a February video that he captioned, in part<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve sent over 1,500 applications and haven\u2019t gotten 1 offer in 2 years \u2026\u00a0even with a masters degree & internships.\u201d Now, the caption continues, he\u2019s \u201cdoing social media to pay the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you\u2019ve been on a job search the last two years, you do not know how bad it is out here,\u201d a Chicago-based techie named Syd wrote in the caption for a March TikTok<\/a> that\u2019s racked up nearly 10 million views. \u201cThe job market is trash, basura, it\u2019s been bad!\u201d<\/p>\n

A 24-year-old Los Angeles\u2013based writer, teacher, and comedian who goes by Femcel1836 began sharing dispatches from her \u201cjob search hell<\/a>\u201d late last year before pouring out her frustrations in a January Substack essay titled \u201cWHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING JOBS?<\/a>\u201d That post went viral, garnering hundreds of comments from like-minded users. One bemoaned that she\u2019d been \u201csuffering through this find a job shit for the past 2 years\u201d; another called this a \u201ccrisis\u201d that was even \u201cmore severe\u201d than the 2008 recession\u2014otherwise known as the worst financial meltdown of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Even experienced workers share the perception that this is the worst job market of their lifetime. \u201cI\u2019ve been laid off before,\u201d Dave told me, sighing as he acknowledged that periods of looking for work are part of having a career. \u201cBut it\u2019s never been this hard to just get interest on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Even during the Great Recession and COVID, there were fewer postings, but it was never this quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a job right now, it might feel hard to convey people who are happily employed just how rough things are. That\u2019s because the topline numbers about the job market are, for all the chaos in America, pretty rosy. The federal jobs report for April<\/a> shows that unemployment is historically, persistently low, that jobs are being added almost continuously, and that there are hundreds of thousands of openings waiting to be filled. Even the measured percentage of \u201cdiscouraged\u201d and underemployed workers fell last month<\/a>, as labor force participation increased overall.<\/p>\n

Take a peek beneath those numbers\u2014which, notably, do not yet<\/a> include many federal workers cut in the DOGE bloodbath who are still receiving severance\u2014and things look more concerning. That\u2019s particularly true for zoomers who went into the very industries that once promised solid, plentiful opportunities. An April 11 report<\/a> from the think tank Employ America pointed out \u201cthe increasingly narrow scope of employment growth.\u201d It found that job numbers have grown mainly in specific sectors, like private health care and education, along with local government. Meanwhile, tech, finance, and manufacturing have either slowed their new job offerings or shed opportunities altogether. The impacts of that penny pinching can be hardest on seniors<\/a> (whose lengthy work experiences and accordingly high salary demands make them unattractive) and young people (who don\u2019t yet have much experience, and whom employers might not want to take on the burden of training). Recent college grads are currently facing an unemployment level that outpaces the national average<\/a>: 5.8 percent vs. 4.2 percent. Last summer, Inside Higher Ed highlighted a report<\/a> finding that \u201cmore than half of bachelor\u2019s degree holders are underemployed a year after graduation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The widespread<\/a>\u00a0economic<\/a>\u00a0uncertainty<\/a>, mass\u00a0government layoffs<\/a>, and\u00a0weakened growth<\/a> all caused recently by the Trump administration don\u2019t help the picture. Indeed, it\u2019s only going to spur a more urgent crisis<\/a> down the line. But the trouble felt today has been brewing for longer than that\u2014since 2022, to be exact. That was the year COVID-era interest rates finally went up and kicked off the massive rounds of rolling tech layoffs<\/a> that have persisted up through this year. (A few prominent examples from 2025 alone<\/a>: a 5 percent workforce cut at Meta, 1,000 jobs lost at Salesforce, a 10 percent workforce reduction at Blue Origin, and 2,000 jobs axed at HP.) \u201cI know so many people who have been laid off from tech companies in the last year,\u201d said Anna J. Rogers, a Bay Area\u2013based science communicator who wrote for Slate about recently leaving her job<\/a> with the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n

The first tech layoffs were the crash after a period of rapid<\/a> pandemic-era hiring, remote-working flexibility, and low interest rates to rejuvenate the COVID-crashed economy. All of that spurred white-collar sectors to greatly expand\u2014and, more importantly, this offered great flexibility to workers, who were able to switch jobs easily<\/a> and negotiate better salaries. Then, interest rates went up, along with interest in revitalizing office attendance. White-collar executives pressed the brakes\u2014not just on carefree spending, but on normal avenues of growth, like routine hiring and training for new roles. They also cut plenty of middle-management and human resources jobs, outsourcing many candidate-screening and hiring processes to automated software.<\/p>\n

Across industries, the number of private sector jobs added last month was the lowest we\u2019ve seen in a year. Overall hiring rates are at their lowest level since the pre-COVID era<\/a>. Daniel Zhao, lead economist at the employer-reviews site Glassdoor, shared a company study<\/a> from November that noted how \u201calmost 2 in 3 professionals feel stuck in their careers\u201d thanks to job-market jitters. \u201cAdditionally, in Glassdoor reviews in January, mentions of layoffs, inflation and recession were all up as economic anxiety is on the rise,\u201d Zhao wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployees are less confident in their ability to leave their jobs and find new ones, as evidenced by a low quit rate,\u201d said Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the job board Indeed, in an email. \u201cJob postings in knowledge-based fields like IT, software, and banking are below pre-pandemic levels, declining after reaching a peak in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

The job postings that are available can be frustrating, to say the least. \u201cIt\u2019s like, We\u2019re looking for someone who\u2019s trained in marketing and can do sales and bookkeeping and basic accounting on Excel,\u201d the Substack writer who goes by Femcel vented to me in a video conversation. \u201cOK, you actually should be hiring an accountant, a salesperson, and a marketer. But you want someone who\u2019s going to be a catchall for the random stuff in the office that needs to get done, and to pay one bad salary.\u201d<\/p>\n

And sometimes, the jobs that have been listed don\u2019t really exist at all. A Resume Builder study from last summer found that 3 out of 10 online postings are \u201cghosts<\/a>,\u201d meaning that the roles don\u2019t exist or employers don\u2019t actually plan to fill said roles. There are a few reasons companies go for such misleading postings, which have the added effect of making job-reports numbers seem rosier<\/a> than they actually are. Maybe they\u2019re planning to hire for that position much further into the future, or they want shareholders to think they\u2019re growing at a healthy pace. \u201cThe game is that these companies can say to investors, \u2018I know we have no profits yet, but we\u2019re trying to grow. We\u2019re trying to hire so badly,\u2019 \u201d said Dave. \u201cI fully believe that LinkedIn is mostly ghost listings.\u201d Zia shares that feeling: \u201cGoing through the job-applying process, I realized more and more that these companies, they\u2019re not really looking to hire,\u201d he told me. \u201cThese job boards are almost like a playground for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this has fueled a legitimate crisis of trust. Earlier this year, the background-check platform Checkr surveyed 3,000 active job-seekers from all age groups about the market and chronicled the results in a February research report<\/a>. About two-thirds of respondents reported that they have fallen for ghost jobs; a similar percent of respondents believed that companies overall \u201care not being honest about true hiring intentions.\u201d In addition, nearly 60 percent of those surveyed stated that \u201csecuring an interview or even a response through traditional job boards feels nearly impossible,\u201d especially if they don\u2019t already have a personal connection at a particular company. \u201cThe state of hiring in the U.S. is at a critical turning point\u2014job-seekers are facing a lack of transparency, inconsistent communication, and hiring processes that feel increasingly disconnected from their needs,\u201d Sam Radbil, a research strategist with Checkr, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

The growing automation of HR means that fewer humans are involved in the hiring process, with A.I. taking on tasks like writing and sharing job descriptions<\/a>, screening r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, putting job-seekers on \u201cblock lists<\/a>,\u201d and even conducting interviews<\/a>\u2014all of which can make the process of actually connecting with an employer incredibly vexing. And if you\u2019re still lucky enough to get through the interviews and finally land an offer, you might not be out of the woods yet. \u201cI got laid off early last year and was applying for at least 100 jobs a week,\u201d said Jessica B. Davis, a career coach who currently works at S&P Global. \u201cBut I was ending up in situations, like many others I knew, where I would get an offer and then they would retract it because I wanted to negotiate my salary.\u201d The unfortunate fact remains: Budgets are tight.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Franklin Schneider
\n Trump Is Selling One Job as America\u2019s Future. I Did It\u2014and It\u2019s Absolutely Miserable.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

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The job-seekers I talked to are getting through it as best they can, and making ends meet creatively while they\u2019re out of work. \u201cI\u2019m part of a job-finding group,\u201d said Dave. \u201cThere\u2019s almost 100 of us, all tech and software executives from Boston to Houston to San Francisco, and we meet to review our r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and chat about updates. Out of this group, one person found a job in the past year, and it was a junior role with much less money.\u201d In the meantime, Dave told me, \u201ceverybody\u2019s out doing a side job\u201d\u2014Uber, DoorDash, petsitting, tutoring, coffeemaking, you name it. Femcel now has an assistant gig with an extremely wealthy (and, as she chronicles on her Substack, extremely weird<\/a>) famous Californian; Zia helps local businesses with web design and, as an astrology enthusiast, has found some paid gigs consulting with fellow believers. Anna J. Rogers also landed a \u201csmall contract role that\u2019s not even going to pay rent,\u201d because \u201cI needed something.\u201d<\/p>\n


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None of this is sustainable in a time when the cost of living remains high, and when safety-net benefits are in danger from federal budget cuts<\/a>. It also puts another lie to the image of America as land of opportunity. After the fallout from the Great Recession, when interest rates were low and companies began hiring rabidly, a typical line of advice was offered to America\u2019s youth: Study a buzzy field in college, get early career experience while there, refine your credentials, and earn that degree\u2014then, you\u2019ll be guaranteed a comfortable, well-paying job with employers who feel lucky to have you. Or at least you\u2019ll be able to pay for the basics and have a family in exchange for hard work. That promise has been, once again, deflating, even if it hasn\u2019t fully collapsed \u2026 yet. The erratic economic policy<\/a> from this administration has left countless employers petrified, unsure whether they should slash more spending now or hold expenses flat; no one\u2019s currently betting<\/a> that things will look better anytime soon. We\u2019re stuck in anticipatory pre-recession mode, and what\u2019s coming next may not be so flush for any of us.<\/p>\n

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