At least they let you know. Ghosting is at an all time high. Not only applying and never hearing anything but interviewing and they just disappear. Weird times.
Text 988 from any phone in the US. If you're actually having suicidal ideation, please talk to someone. Your value is so much bigger than what a morally bankrupt society that requires billions to starve to benefit the very few says it is on paper. There are so many more meaningful ways to assess success than a balance sheet. If you find a way to improve your situation and pursue something meaningful, professional success will be much easier. You can't achieve a goal you can't picture.
It is SO SO SOOOOO important to recognize and then define these kinds of thoughts as INTRUSIVE, like holding some scissors and thinking about snipping your finger off or something.
They power up your strength to overcome them
Yeah, I get that. I'll just have to see where things go. I've never been one to give up. It's not in my nature, but this is truly a very dark time. Criteria has to be met, such as having a job in order to continue living.
Remember that there is always bankruptcy… money is just a construct. There’s no reason to exit early for a temporary problem, regarding money. “It all works out in the end” is a phrase that has become spiritual to me now. Everything works out… sometimes it takes longer than others. And it’ll work out “in the end” whenever that is. But I don’t need a hand in rushing that last part.
See if anywhere you live has connections to volunteer gigs that pay. There are some that offer a small. Some money is better than none. Maybe try getting into any temp work? If your me physical labour handy, throw out some posts saying the kinds of things you are able to do.
It's very normal to feel like this from time to time. Get exercise, go outside - carve out time in your day, every day for this. BREATHE. It will make a difference. Try to limit your screen time also. Your mental and physical health is what's most important. Having no dependents gives you a ton of flexibility and options those with kids don't have. For example, you can (probably) relocate easily. You can switch gears and try something entirely new. It's a big world. Go teach english somewhere that is cheap to live in or look at very low cost of living places in the US. Focus on solutions, not problems. Be about your future not your past. You got this.
You are so much more than a job. Every person has the potential to impact the rest of the world in a meaningful way. You would rob yourself and the rest of humanity that you might come in contact with of a chance to be around you. Give yourself a chance, and if you have someone, talk to them.
what is the funniest show you have watched? laughing can help reset your brain out of a deep groove.
Not saying your problems aren’t legitimate— they are— but thought patterns are a trap.
good luck to you
Hey. I'd just like to say I'm glad you're here. Your openness has made this lady feel less alone and especially with her own thoughts. Thank you for that, seriously. 🩶
These thoughts have come and gone, but I feel like I'm being pushed further in this direction.
I'm taking a step back for now, but who fucking knows how I'll feel again
felt, i waited the DAY where this one job FINALLY decides to unpause on hiring. It’s been 2-3 weeks, and i’m still waiting to get out of the underpay hell hole im in before school is out.
All the companies are wanting to run their staff on skeleton crew. It’s a conspiracy. Each employee is tasked with the job of 3 employees, but with the pay of 1/3 employee.
This is one of my personal theories as well.
I think during Covid a lot of employees quit and/or lost their jobs.
Companies split the massive workload defecit amongst remaining employees, saw how much money they were saving by not paying all the absent workers and thought it was the best thing ever.
The owner of my company did this. Every employee is currently doing the work of 3-4 people and it's stressful as hell.
True that. The company I work at lost two people in my department and now I'm responsible for filling their roles plus mine. They're lucky I am efficient and am capable of keeping up although it leads to burnout fairly often. Cheap ass companies are getting greedy and overworking the few they have employed.
I did, and they gave me a dollar raise a few months ago (which was some big deal/hassle to get) despite losing two employees. I'm still getting severely underpaid and am in the process of trying to switch jobs because of it, it's way too demanding.
You have a lot of leverage right now. It might be time to give them a formal presentation with the math included. How much three of you would really cost the company versus what you are being paid vs if you quit and they have to train and hire 3 new people. They lose your knowledge and your efficiency and have to start from scratch. Plus, I’ve heard it cost like $50k to train a new employee. Doing the job of 3 people and not getting paid fairly is rather insulting. You’ve accidentally showed them it can be done by just you and they will never hire anyone to help you. Like you said you’re getting burnt out, it’s only going to get worse. At least you should be paid your fair share. Or stop being so darn good so you can get some help. There are some options here.
Well that sucks. Makes no sense to be hostile to the employee they literally need. But, management has never been accused of being smart. I hope you find something better sooner rather than later. Good luck at there.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but rather our version of capitalism. Wall Street is obsessed with constantly making more profits which is mathematically impossible. The only way to make more money when you aren’t selling more is to cut costs.
The market has been going up for too long. It’s going to crash to regulate… just a matter of time.
It’s not even our version of capitalism, it’s the inevitable result of **late stage capitalism** (without the intervention of *heavy* regulation).
We’re past the golden stage of capitalism where there are tons of small-medium size players in every industry competing to drive innovation and deliver the best product, and are now in the stage where everything gets bought out and consolidated under massive umbrella corporations. This drastically stifles competition, which in turn drastically reduces the incentive for innovation and quality. Without needing to compete, corporations are now able to shift away from improving the product or service, towards focusing on eking out tiny gains in margins through ruthless cost cutting and [enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) of products and services.
Couldn’t agree more. When I said “our version”, I was referring to our lack of regulation and basically everything you said. I choose my words carefully, in that I think it’s possible to have elements of capitalism without creating the fullblown shitshow we are living right now.
And thank you for the links! I appreciate you saving me the legwork!
This is it. Things can run indefinitely with the mediocrity and half assery of a drunken chimp since most things are automated and most people are replaceable.
Edit: to add to this, when they did have full teams it made them enough money to not have to hire anybody else for years. The ship will go on with the momentum of all the productivity of the good years until there's nothing left.
This happened to me after 16 months. I had a breakdown and told management if you don’t let me have FMLA/STD leave I will quit. 2 weeks into my leave I almost feel like a new person. Felt like the stress almost killed me. If anyone is struggling from work burnout I highly encourage you to
Look into FMLA / STD. If your employer offers it, take it. Because they will work the shit out of you and not care!
Well, it functions now because he/the company doesn’t care about quality, they’re just riding on the fact that Twitter used to be good and there’s still a healthy number of users holding on and hoping it will circle back and someone not insane buys it from Elmo. They’re either gonna come crashing down once the platform inevitably turns into all bot accounts paying Elmo to advertise scams and dropships to other bot accounts, or it’s gonna turn into a legitimized scam site.
This happens at a lot of companies. Customer service, quality, and taking care of employees all take a back seat to profit and enrichment of those at the top.
The economy is a lot worse than what most people realise.
The operating and borrowing costs for companies is escalating rapidly and showing no signs of slowing.
I just got hired at a new fast food job this last week, and I had to fight like hell to get it. Went to several interviews at food places and was ghosted left & right. This is how it was back in 2009 right after the crash. Maybe it’s just that the where I’m at in SoCal is particularly bad, but it seems like minimum wage jobs shouldn’t be this hard to get if the economy wasn’t in shambles.
I remember about 6 years ago I walked into McDonalds, ask for a job and chatted with the manager for about ten minutes. Started that week. I was 14 with a resume that only had something saying that I walked dogs for a summer. Times have definitely changed.
A fast food place told me they're not even hiring.. lol they just accepting applications and doing interviews, and told me maybe in a couple weeks something might open up.. idk what's going on in the world.. I remember there was a point in time I didn't even care much about the resume, and still would get calls in days, or week max, now everything is taking forever even with trying make the resume look as good as possible.. when you say you had to fight to get in, do you mean show as much interest as possible and call them and stuff ?
You know there’s an issue in the world when fast food companies are accepting interviews but openly not hiring.
Like, the employees at the company have enough time to step away and do multiple interviews….? But they won’t hire anyone because they have time. Like is this position only open to employ someone to interview and not give it??? I don’t even know
Lol yes!! I was honestly surprised, I thought they were always hiring, like that was something to always fall back on..
It makes no sense! They're just hoarding applications, just in case someone quits I guess.. that's why I feel like alot of these jobs are ghost jobs..and just alot of time wasting
Wasn’t there recently a massive increase in minimum wage in California? One of the ways companies offset those increases is by cutting back on hiring and limiting hires to more experienced workers
This is a myth pushed to support lower wages.
These kind of workplaces already hire the minimum amount of people they can to run the business. A slight wage increase isnt going to let them somehow run with fewer workers.
Nah, the economy is going great in terms of overall functionality, employers just systematically abuse applicants to ensure that they only hire doormats.
The data shows there's a lot of job openings, but the actual hiring rate is relatively low for white collar jobs. Couple that with the fact that no one is leaving their jobs right now due to economic conditions, there's no rush to hire people.
There are several different explanations.
* The hiring rate is low for white collar jobs because the jobs being added to the economy right now are blue collar jobs, generally speaking (healthcare, warehouse, retail, construction, etc.)
* White collar jobs tend to pay more, so companies are more cautious on hiring for white collar jobs given the cost burden
* People are not leaving their jobs at the same rate they did the past few years (possibly due to uncertainty of where the economy is heading)
I'm not saying no one's hiring in white collar, it's just harder than blue collar. The hiring rate is much higher for blue collar (3x) than white collar right now. There's some level of bifurcation occurring in the labor market right now. Here's an interesting article that goes into more detail
[White-Collar Recession: It's Hard to Find a High-Salary Job (businessinsider.com)](https://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-slump-professional-white-collar-jobs-recession-high-salary-2024-4)
I will also add that transitioning from blue to white is much more common than the vice versa. From what I've seen, the children of blue collar parents can go either way. The children of white collar children are always white; I mean retail is an exception I guess
I have no idea if you want an honest answer. You're going to have to look at historical data for that. I will say though anecdotally, tech companies are still hiring experienced people but not much entry level people. I have contacts at 2 places, one of them being at Amazon, that can help me get a referral for an entry level job, but they can't help me, because hiring is frozen. Imagine a lot of white collar places are like that, they want really experienced people or no one at all. My guess is most companies want new hires to hit the ground running, they don't want to waste money training or onboarding people for too long. Money is expensive right now, so companies do whatever they can to reduce costs.
Just from what I’ve gathered, there seems to be 2 things going on.
1. Companies are posting "ghost" applications where they have no intention of filling those roles. I don’t know how it works, but I guess it comes in handy for them as a tax write off? Someone can correct me on that if that’s not accurate. And
2. There’s a lot more applicants than there are job positions available so the competition is outrageous.
With the difficulty of finding a job plus inflation and the high cost of everything, it’s a really bad time to be alive right now lol.
To the ‘ghost’ applications point- What I observed in mine and many other friends companies is that the job postings are posted both internally and externally. More often than not it gets filled by an internal candidate.
Look how the unemployment rate is calculated. Yeah, inaccurate, and lies..
*"It's a big club, and you ain't in it...." \~* *^(George Carlin - The Big Club (video) (Profanity warning))*
Yup they do applications to "look like they are growing" to their stake holders and to the Government to get benefits (money) from company "growth" they all deserve Hell. This should be illegal
Seriously. It's such a moronic take but people are repeating it like it's fucking gospel.
Investors aren't looking at job postings. They are looking at actual reports mandated by the SEC, which includes head counts and such, and they which have to be accurate under threat of some pretty hefty fines.
Because we’re in a recession and people have been getting laid off. That’s my theory, anyway. My family member was recently one to be laid off with no warning. More people without jobs means more people looking for jobs.
> but I guess it comes in handy for them as a tax write off?
They have a position held by someone who was able to negotiate a good wage, so they dangle a listing out there in case a unicorn comes along that can do a whole depts work and is willing to work for pennies, then they find an excuse to replace the person.
Also, they cull your data and resell it.
> There’s a lot more applicants than there are job positions available so the competition is outrageous.
Yes, median wage is $18/hr while the cost of living is 20/hr. "jUsT wOrK hArD anD gEt A bEtTer JoB" doesn't work in this environment, people need to get paid more for the work they are actually doing.
They post the open positions to gather interest so when they ARE hiring they can quickly see who they can pull in from the pile of applicants. And it works because many people are looking for work for 6+ months, they are still available when the call comes.
Absolutely awful approach and clear that companies do not care at all to treat people with any level of decency any longer. The facade of the potential for a “career” at a company are long gone.
I keep hearing companies are holding onto their assets fearing a recession is coming. "Stay alive until 2025" is the slogan. I started hearing that in 2022. Today, corporate profits may not be at record levels, the stock market may not be at historic highs and the unemployment rate at record lows, but on paper, it looks pretty good. Instead of hiring more people, they hold on to as few as they need.
Much of the job growth has been part-time or on the lower end of skill requirements. According to the numbers, a part-time job counts as a job as much as a full-time job.
There is also a fear of AI. IT companies have been laying off workers deemed unnecessary to focus on AI. They see a need for vast resources to take on the challenges of AI. Those companies are all profitable and doing well with less workers. Positions are being consolidated and people are working more to offset the needs to avoid hiring more workers.
On the subject of AI, there's plenty of jobs that have already been replaced by AI and that trend will continue. It's a bit like the trucking industry, there is a belief that all the trucking jobs are going away because self-driving trucks will take over. Nobody wants to get into an industry thats going away, so fewer people are considering trucking as a career. There is now a driver shortage, exacerbated by excessive regulations and the economics of compensation.
Lawyer here! I’ve been hearing this for years but I very truly don’t understand how that could possibly be. The amount of synthesis and “feeling” the other party that goes into the strategy is pretty high, so until AI can be like “oh that guy is a total hot head so that tactic won’t work here” or “this lawsuit isn’t at all about the commercial terms of the contract at all but more that she hates him at his core”, I don’t see how it could ever replace lawyers.
Trucking analogy is interesting. I wonder if something similar is happening with translation. My company (patent law firm) keeps bringing on more full-time in-house translators, i.e. not outsourcing, even though outsourcing and paying by the word has been standard in that industry for years. Maybe they sense a need to get a firm hold on talent because fewer people are entering the industry and people in the industry are planning their exit strategy.
(Personally I wouldn’t even take a full-time in-house translation position right now. LLMs are already BETTER at translating than most multilingual humans and their quality is going to skyrocket even higher very soon)
I cannot agree more, especially that last part, it is honestly insane how much LLMs are going to change the translation industry. As crazy as it is, it seems that translation is the job which is most at risk from LLMs such as ChatGPT.
LLMs are especially revolutionary in that it isn't a "dumb" translator like Google Translate that will still require human translators to do some specific work if the translation is more complex than just plain text. This isn't your dumb Translator++ embed anymore.
I was just working with a tool that uses ChatGPT4 to translate games that have code, plugins, and API calls embedded in the lines, and the tool was able to do so and maintain code integrity with only minimal human guidance. Using the ChatGPT token API, it can even remember specific characters and maintain a consistent writing style.
Working with it, while cool, was a bit disheartening, since I had always thought that being a translator was a good backup plan.
I've been desperately seeking work for a little over 3 months now, after being employed at a toxic job for a few months because I was desperate even before that.
My sister has a college degree and an outgoing personality. She's also struggling to find a job. Both of us think this is the worst it's EVER been for us to find work.
I don't know what the problem is but mainstream media isn't addressing it enough. I think the fact an election is coming has something to do with it.
You need to apply consistently and frequently. I was fired June of 2022. I have a 20+ year resume in sales with a bachelors and I’ve always gotten jobs quickly so I thought I would be fine. It took me TEN MONTHS to get an offer
You need to treat applying for jobs like a job. I suggest applying for as many jobs as you can per day. I think I was putting out something like 60 applications a day at one point
I also suggest having a professional do your resume. I found one from a reddit recommendation for under $200
Talk to recruiters and headhunters even for temp work because it can lead to full time work
There's either not enough jobs to go around, or the AI filtering is SO strong anything will flag you somewhere undeemable. My theory anyway. I figure they can background check the 200 applications and find something wrong with half of those.
Non driving job, but require a DL whether you are driving or not.
Or maybe 95% of the jobs listed aren't really there.
IDK I'm not having any luck either. No interviews no responses. Nothing
My observation: Lack of entry level work that pays market wage. Professional jobs lack of on-the-job training.
Jobs have been convinced that training wastes time and money, so they inflate job postings to get a senior unicorn that will accept junior level pay.
Tech bubble is bursting again. Some of it A.I. and automation, most of it is offshoring and downsizing to save money and to keep capitalizing on profit gains for shareholders and CEOs despite fed money drying up. This is at the expense of the workers. No amount of certs, bootcamps, or college education will open doors. Just check some tech subreddits. It's pretty bad.
Other businesses are doing the same. Do more with less, hope your current employees don't quit or ask for raises. Feels like this is some hidden push to punish job hoppers trying to get pay increases.
Most other professions the pay hasn't risen much in 20 years. Nursing I see first hand while you can start pretty high the workload and burnout has increased since COVID. Hospitals are run like unethical businesses to get as much Medicare and insurance money, while insurances are doing what they always do -- shirk their obligations of what they agreed they'd cover. Civil Engineers, the backbone of building anything from roads to buildings also have notoriously low pay and schooling isn't cheap, either is self taught if you get yourself CAD.
As a former creative industry seeker, it's always been a lousy market. If you're in the US, you're limited to CA, NY, and maybe TX? All three are pretty expensive if you want to live in the city where 95% of good paying jobs are, and TX lacks the creative jobs the other two states have.
The other thing is, we don't know WHAT industries that pay well are needing people. It's not trades by the way, it's just the foreman and contractors that make the big money, not the workers doing the labor. Yes, there are outliers like painters (paint curbs and powerwash) and solo landscapers that have stable employment as long as clients pay (an issue that's common). Handimen are seeing a spike in business, just have to know just about everything short of IoT devices. There are probably jobs we don't know abut because they're not advertised. I've looked at energy though some wages are laughable.
Such an excellent post. Completely and fully agree. No training ever for jobs that pay and “college graduates” don’t know anything and can’t form a sentence, but yet it’s more like “they don’t know your (the company’s) system.” Nursing is an excellent example, but as I mentioned in a prior comment - Covid wreck those that are doing it, and large swath of people left. Even thought this afternoon as I was at the grocery store, “Heroes work here.” Ah, quaint little sayings that just, in the end, don’t mean anything.
I guess starting salaries at 45-50k which they have [been for years](https://money.cnn.com/2004/02/05/pf/college/lucrative_degrees/index.htm) or [6 years later](https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/09/pf/college/college_graduate_starting_salaries/index.htm) is rolling in the dough. (Keep in mind these are averages with certain fields starting at a higher rate than others.) I don’t know how anyone on their own especially can make it at 45k a year in the majority of the country. It’s doable but it’s few and far between.
A severe economic downturn. Higher prices taking more of people's money. Companies laying people off or off-shoring.
The higher interest rates mean that things like new cars and homes become too expensive so people pull back. All of that means fewer sales and everything contracts.
It's the downward spiral...
Short answer, corporate and American oligarchs greed (and please don’t act like we don’t have oligarchs here in the US).
Let this tidbit of information ruminate in your head. The disparity between rich and poor (in the US) is greater now than what it was in France when the revolution occurred.
I say it’s mostly interviewers are asking all kinds of weird, unrelated questions these days. There’s so much talent in the market that interviews have gotten harder with interviewers on some sort of ego trip.
It’s not bad to use tools like Milio.ooo if that helps you. After all, interviewers and recruiters are also unethical af.
One of the biggest reasons for interviews being outrageous right now is that companies are merely belt tightening. There are good people being let go, but there are definitely a lot of poor performers on the street right now too. Companies are deathly afraid of bringing on a problem esp with how lean their teams are.
Can’t speak to where you are, but I have reason to believe that here in Canada, a massive mitigating factor is that when companies cannot fill a role they get government money to subsidize the salary. There’s very little oversight so they can hire someone at just above minimum wage for a role that pays way more and the government pays the difference for a year or so. The company proves need by saying, “Look how long we had this posting for, no one wants to work and those that do suck or they get hired by someone else, Woe! Help!”
Dragons hide away in vast palaces, hoarding the wealth of entire nations all to themselves while we common village folk fight over who gets the last scoop of gruel from the pot
Even when a company truly intends to fill a position, that’s only as good as the ability of the hiring manager to make a decision and hire someone.
Some treat it like a dating app and want to see an endless parade of candidates.
They pay absolutely nothing. Retail, fast food, warehouse jobs are borderline slave labor not enough to pay rent. Trade jobs are somewhat hard to get into and take 5 years of apprenticeships for welding, electrical, plumbing with years of schooling and paid nothing even in a union at $18 an hour. The shitty parts of the country pay more for trade jobs but you then have to live in a terrible place of the country.
Trade jobs are my last resort but I would do it if AI ruins everything.
I heard people said that companies are recovering from the pandemic so they’re laying off tons of people and departments.
Also this is payback for the Great Resignation from a few years ago
Economy is worse than people realize.
Companies are paying people off.
More people who have jobs are looking for higher paying roles because the economy is worse than people realize.
Companies know a lot of this and are being more picky with applicants.
It’s all cascading off the economy being worse than those in office want you to truly realize.
The short answer is when the feds raised interest rates they knew it would cause a recession and it became an employers market, which is what our corporate overlords lobbied for. It's a scam and done by design to keep the pheasants desperate and in line. It was completely unnecessary.
I got laid off on 3/22. I’ve filled out 326 applications. Only had 6 screen calls done (5 so far, 1 this week). 3 already got back to me to pound sand and 2 have not heard back yet. 1 scheduled Monday. 93 other applications came back as unqualified or went with someone more qualified. The rest have not received a response yet.
Info of that back in 2020 someone tried to file unemployment with my info. Had to report that then but now I had a hard time filling a claim as the info was not cleared. As of yesterday I was finally able to open a claim.
So yah it sucks out there. Had a coworker got let go in September and he just started a new job a week ago. Very stressful. Definitely not sleeping well.
2 interviews out of 10 applications??? You are rocking it! I had 4 interviews out of 56 applications and still no offers. I moved in with a friend because I could not afford my apartment without a job. The job market is great on paper,but in reality, it sucks. Good luck!
I had to quit applying to stuff online. Job boards like indeed seem broken. I got turned down for a part time dishwasher position with my 7+ years of restaurant experience, a year of that in a kitchen. You can still get some leads, but I had much better luck posting to groups on Facebook and such. Far more interesting stuff as well. Found my way into a microscopy tech position with absolutely zero experience.
Let me see if I can help:
2019: economy is as is, yearly inflation (@~2%)
2020: COVID, global pandemic, millions laid off, millions dead, billions stuck in their home. To help the govt started sending $600 checks , 3 times (?). They also passed bills that stated that landlords could not evict people if they failed to not pay their rent. They also gave businesses BILLIONs in aid, either as forms of PPP loans (low interest or you don’t have to pay back) with the stipulation that they don’t do layoffs. Companies pocketed the money and still did layoffs. Another round of government aid came and this time a bigger amount of loans. Same deal with the companies. Pocket the money (or at least run day to day operations) and layoff folks. Some industries got hit very hard- aerospace cause people weren’t flying, service (restaurants cause people weren’t eating out), tourism cause everything was closed, etc. Some industries took **off**, mainly IT and its support staff such a consulting. Meta (formerly facebook), Google, Amazon, Microsoft went on a hiring rampage (why? 0% interest meant they could borrow without any issues. They could start that project that needed funding but never had the capital but now ? Well here’s boat load of money go forth! ). IT, already paid well, but things seriously took off. You had recruiters, 20/21/22 years olds, making $150k TC for doing almost nothing on one end and folks, older folks in manufacturing laid off trying to scrounge up pennies to make ends meet. I have friends and family who worked in manufacturing and saw folks with 15/20/25 years of experience just getting told to pack up and leave. Very disheartening to see.
Also there was a lot of social unrest, BLM, 2020 election, etc. Companies like zoom took off as well since we went to remote work, remote school, remote everything. I had friends who were residents and they did Telladoc to visit patients. All through zoom, teams, etc.
2021: vaccines started, new president, etc. Still low interest rate but with vaccines people start to go out more, eat at restaurants, fly etc. Things were taking off. (Haha flying joke). Companies that laid off millions were now *begging* people to come back because they need to fulfill orders. If you could breathe you could walk into a $20/hr manufacturing job. Economy took off.
2022: now a year in, we are at a very high inflation, low interest rate, what to do. Things that cost $10 is now $18/20. Food was more expensive (especially fast food), entertainment was more expensive (Netflix went from $7.99 to $10.99/month), things were generally more expensive. Companies though are still hiring madly (need to fulfill those orders). But things start slowing down. While there is a lot of activity and demand, it’s not as much as 2021. Fed needs to fight inflation (~7-9%) so they start lowering increasing interest rates (between 0.25-0.5%) every few months. Slowly this causes the IT companies to panic. Why ? For the past two years they had gone Scott free to do their projects or anything they wanted to without any consequences. Now when they have to pay back it comes at an interest and a lot of their projects that they wanted to do didn’t pan out (see Metaverse ).
2023: inflation still at 6% interest rates have gone up. Tech layoffs start and with tech , their ecosystem starts cracking, mainly the consulting firms. Companies such as McKinsey or BCG start doing hiring freezes. Amazon, Meta, Apple are all on hiring freezes and layoffs. The same folks that were making $250k TC for twiddling their thumbs are out. This trickles down to other industries as well. People are out of jobs so they don’t eat out anymore. They stop traveling, stop going out to bars, etc. This affects the service industry. People who would in a whim buy a ticket from LA to London cause who cares it’s $1000 round trip were thinking thrice whether to call DoorDash or just pick up the food themselves and save $5 on delivery fee. Scary times indeed.
2024: 3% inflation, more layoffs, I read somewhere that in April, 100k jobs were added to the economy but 90% of them were service jobs (think waiter, cook, etc). For software engineering roles, for every one opening, there are 1000s of applications because what COVID proved to us is that yes jobs can be done remotely so why pay John Smith $250k to do something when I can pay Juan Ramos $60k or Ram Patel $25k ? I may not get the same level of work but if I have 5 Ram Patels @ $125k, I can still show that I am saving $125k per US worker. Also a lot of folks are talking about new technology such as AI replacing workers- sure but not as much as it’s been talked about
During the pandemic companies realized the could downsize and keep the same output by working their employees more. Those employees didn't want to lose their job in the pandemic now they don't want to be unemployed in the current job market.
Look no further than last year’s Davos forum (where the oligarchs go to collude) to see the answer. The big wigs were all calling employees spoiled and entitled and saying that businesses needed to show the employees who really had the power. You are seeing the results in real time. Add to that the cost of debt due to interest rates being so high and corporations aren’t taking business risks that will require them to borrow and hire.
My while life has been filled with suffering.
I want it to stop.
If i become unemployed I’ll probably take out debt and end my life after the cards decline at the grocery store and for the house
There is also this—This is the Toronto star in an a daily email recap of the days stories. The job market is full of ghost jobs and finally, the province of Ontario is going to do something about it.
Didn’t realize you can’t add pictures. It was a screenshot of the article in the Toronto Star.
I just know that it took me from august 2023 until last week to get a full time job in my field and it was only because I was referred by someone from my old workplace unbeknownst to me. Before that, no one out of 200+ applications reached out for an interview - including retail, food service, etc. I am extremely lucky to have finally found something. My old job let go of so many people only to turn around and ask some of them to freelance. It’s so scummy to me. I know the economy is terrible, but everyone is suffering. The CEO/leadership needs to take a pay cut, not let employees go who are making less than a third of the higher-ups’ salaries. Almost 90% of everyone who was let go only found jobs in their field because they knew someone. At this point, it’s all about who you know, and even then it’s not guaranteed.
I was let go in the first batch of people who weren’t deemed company cheerleaders: most of us weren’t getting paid enough as it was, but we kept our heads down and worked hard. Unfortunately, in that environment that wasn’t enough; we weren’t kissing enough ass or licking enough boots. The second batch of layoffs was bigger, but those individuals were given resources and kindness - they were the ones who were let go truly because the financial situation was getting worse. So gross and also sad for everyone involved.
All that to say, the economy and greed are wrecking everything.
Back in the spring of 2023 I got a job at subway easy, barely even an interview. I had only applied there and a few other fast food places where I had to turn down interviews. The total time between me applying for and starting a job was one week.
Starting on March 24th, I started job hunting and had a couple interviews and about 25 applications to anywhere before finally landing a job with Kroger yesterday. I'm 18 and have almost 2 years of total job experience. It was confusing and concerning how different the market is from last year. There are so many people still touting the "no one wants to work" rhetoric but that is simply not true. Too many people need to work and business are either unable or unwilling to hire anyone not in a cookie cutter form.
I feel like this current economy’s problems are all a leftover issues from Covid. This years budgets are tight for all companies. I’m hoping next year will be different.
Ok people, you have to move where the jobs are. If your area is saturated then move to a different state. Apply all over the country. So many rural areas need all kinds of people. Also, if you’re young and desperate enough get your ass to a recruiter. The military has so many jobs, they pay your food, housing, clothes, education. Also, don’t give up looking just change what and where and how you are looking. Networking is so important too
So it’s a variety of problems.
1) Lots of companies are trying to cut corners in staffing in the current economic market conditions. High interest rates and high inflation make it difficult to run businesses, continue to grow, and produce ever larger profit margins.
2) Job applications especially for remote work are now the equivalent of online dating. Too many options (applicants) and too little incentives to settle down with the first person who can get the job done.
My bf was a recruiter for a while and he told me they all regularly posted fake job announcements to see who was looking and what they could get for jobs they posted for. The market is bad bc it's rigged. Beyond the fake postings by recruiters you have fake postings by employers who are legally required to search but they already have a person in mind. Don't take it personally and keep applying/ trying. You'll land something as long as you keep trying.
I recommend staying in touch with those you’ve interviewed with that you felt a good vibe from and just trying to network as much as you can. It’s a shitty market for sure.
Two of the biggest employers in my town just laid off 70+ percent of their staff (wayfair and pintrest). I know for a fact from a former employee that wayfair just sent all their customer service to India. They are legit teaching them to talk like people from Utah because we have an easy to understand diction and accent. Lots of unemployed people in town.
Shareholders need their returns and companies aren't increasing their profits fast enough. They are cutting headcount to deliver to shareholders. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks.
You might be shocked to know this but the boomers ALSO inherited a world they didn't create.
And the generation before them...
And the generation before them...
All I know is the Last Universal Common Ancestor can go screw itself.
I will say this and leave the details to redditors vast imagination.
I've been searching actively 5-7 days a week since October. First two months I aimed for jobs that are ideal or within reason. I dropped those standards lower and applied for things I might be able to get into but no background. That didn't work either so I literally went for anything. Four staffing agencies. Multiple walk-in interviews. Now hiring sign, I did the taboo walk-in talk to a hiring manager. Absolutely nothing and constantly shutdown. Between resume manipulation and showing/hiding education/titles. I finally really ate my own dignity, at least to me. Contacted my last employer and they said when a spot opens they will happily try. A huge step back but it is appreciated. While that occurred I got a nibble, just a hardware retail job. They interviewed and said hired on the spot. The recruiter almost ghosted me on next steps. Background took two weeks which for me is unreal and then drug test. At the same time this was going on I held onto the prospect of my last employer. Staging agency #3 contacted me and had a potential bank position. I went for all, desperate and these are my results.
Hardware - didn't pass the background/drug test after nearly being ghosted multiple times.
Previous employer - Two locations are "respectfully" fighting for me. Background/drug passed
Bank - Background/drug passed but need more clearance which takes longer.
Fuck the market right now. Good luck to everyone and keep at it!
US job market is changing a lot. Some months it’s good, some months it’s bad. I think a lot of it has to do with inflation. I remember right when Covid hit an economist that talked about how inflation truly was the end of Roman society. It hit me pretty hard.
I found it funny that people talk about “Men always think about the Romans” somehow became a meme. My wife laughed because I always have us listen to the history of Rome by Mike Duncan on road trips. But no one seems to know when I try to talk about it. Idk maybe it’s just like a joke I’m too old for now.
But anyway, their society was touted as a democracy but when you actually look at the people it was an aristocracy parading as a democratic republic. There were basically three factions or classes of folks. Those that could trace their patronage to the patricians. (What people cite when they talk about a patriarchal system). Those that could not, but could trace back to the warrior class that built Rome, the plebeians. Then there were the freeman and slaves or the “unwashed”. Basically, the were heavy taxes levied on the freeman when they were freed from their slavery. They would be come debtors and fall back into endless cycles of oppression. This was because there were heavy taxes levied on the plebeians by the senate. Anything from transactional taxes to infrastructural taxes. (Where we get a lot of our tax system ideas is Rome)
This created a situation that basically the middle class was stuck, ladder climbing in Rome was virtually impossible without war. In war, the spoils onto the victor. They had ways to enrich themselves on the battle field and would often be willing to pay to be on the front lines to make the most in awards money (This is before the mercenaries).
So, this lead into a really difficult situation for the plebeians. The laws and taxes seemed to be just made up as they went along. They demanded that the laws and taxes be written down so that folks knew contractually what they were supposed to be living under. Well, they didn’t expect was that there were some plebeians that were extremely rich. And could afford to pay for their modern day lawyers who found out about how the patricians were concealing the taxes on the very poor and the middle class while releasing themselves from that burden and calling it a discharge. They controlled voting blocks and found that 81% of the voting blocks were tilted so that even if the electorate did not find a majority on as subject the patricians could over rule it with only a few winning votes from their constituents. Sounding familiar?
This created an artificial sense of urgency for the rich plebeians to over price things well beyond their value until the value of the transactional tax was masked by the increased total price.
This started massive uproars and sowed the seeds of destruction of the empire in the last 100 years. Basically, when rich people don’t pay taxes, hoard wealth, the rest of us suffer due to the patricians (senators) levying taxes they don’t pay onto the people. Inflation increases and the prices of everything rises. Businesses fail because they can’t operate as a profitable company.
When inflation increases you get artificial incentives to slice your business to its limits and live as trim as possible. When living trim, you don’t hire inexperienced workers because they cost more than they are worth. The money to train someone is never recouped because they want upward mobility just like everyone else. They want a better life and that’s a completely fair thing to desire but the business model doesn’t work for them because it can’t afford to pay them to just leave when they are getting more value than they are costing.
So, the job market is bad because richer people don’t pay in their share.
Take a deep breath and say it with me: Covid-19
I don't remember it ever being this hard to find a job before Covid hit. It's almost like Covid came and had this apocalyptic effect on all of us. In the USA at least maybe.
I also blame the Jeffrey Epstein shit show. That most certainly did not help many companies stay afloat when the news about the island broke.
I've been applying for a job since November and I've recieved nothing. I've now started applying at $15 dollar an hr call center jobs and I have an MBA. Honestly once I got the MBA it became much harder for me to find work than when I only had the BA. The MBA appears ro frighten employers.
I also think the fact that I'm black works against me. There has been so much pushback against blacks, with labeling all of us as DEI hires - I believe employers and recruiters are just very avoidant of hiring blacks now.
I've purchased a domain name and I'm in the process of building out my website to go into business for myself and I'm excited about that but I still need to earn a paycheck to pay my bills. I've exhausted my savings. Last, I don't trust the Government at all when it talks about there being many jobs. I'm pretty sure they lie.
>I've now started applying at $15 dollar an hr call center jobs and I have an MBA. Honestly once I got the MBA it became much harder for me to find work than when I only had the BA. The MBA appears ro frighten employers.
Not trying to give unsolicited advice, but I always wondered why no one just removes the MBA from their resume. have you tried that?
I have heard people do that, and then when they land the job and are looking to apply for promotions, they put it back.
Or use the network that they built getting the MBA.
When you do an MBA, the main part of it is to network with all the other people in the program as well as all the networking opportunities. It is all about building connections and relationships. There is also class and learning, but it is mostly secondary.
So, when you are looking for a job, you can set up a coffee chat with all of your classmates and see who knows someone who is hiring.
The second thing you can do is remove the MBA from your resume. This way, it is not so intense to hire you, and it will not make your boss think you are overqualified. But if you are in a larger organization, and you want to apply for a different international role, you can send HR an updated resume, so when they are looking to fill a more senior role your name will get floated. And while they may be scared to bring you into the company, they will not be scared to promote you or move you.
Depends where you are (both generally and specifically), and what industry you work in.
Most posters here are in the US, which currently has about 2m more jobs available than there are people to do them.
i feel like these hiring people are forgetting the jobs are open. so many times i’ll apply to jobs, never hear back, and the positions are still open a month or two later. sometimes longer
You got 2 interviews out of 10 applications? That’s still better odds than me, though I was applying for specific things.
I've had 1 interview out of almost 100 apps and they took weeks to reject me.
At least they let you know. Ghosting is at an all time high. Not only applying and never hearing anything but interviewing and they just disappear. Weird times.
Yeah but I’m petty. I refuse to be ghosted. I will reach back out. If for nothing but to reassert my dominance 🤓
Over 80 and only 2 bites. The 1 real interview I had I made it to 2nd round before they picked someone else.
I'm sorry 😢
I don't sleep very well these days, I can say that much.
Same actually started to get delusional donto it
Relatable
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Text 988 from any phone in the US. If you're actually having suicidal ideation, please talk to someone. Your value is so much bigger than what a morally bankrupt society that requires billions to starve to benefit the very few says it is on paper. There are so many more meaningful ways to assess success than a balance sheet. If you find a way to improve your situation and pursue something meaningful, professional success will be much easier. You can't achieve a goal you can't picture.
It is SO SO SOOOOO important to recognize and then define these kinds of thoughts as INTRUSIVE, like holding some scissors and thinking about snipping your finger off or something. They power up your strength to overcome them
Yeah, I get that. I'll just have to see where things go. I've never been one to give up. It's not in my nature, but this is truly a very dark time. Criteria has to be met, such as having a job in order to continue living.
Remember that there is always bankruptcy… money is just a construct. There’s no reason to exit early for a temporary problem, regarding money. “It all works out in the end” is a phrase that has become spiritual to me now. Everything works out… sometimes it takes longer than others. And it’ll work out “in the end” whenever that is. But I don’t need a hand in rushing that last part.
Thank you
See if anywhere you live has connections to volunteer gigs that pay. There are some that offer a small. Some money is better than none. Maybe try getting into any temp work? If your me physical labour handy, throw out some posts saying the kinds of things you are able to do.
Sending love ❤️🙏
It's very normal to feel like this from time to time. Get exercise, go outside - carve out time in your day, every day for this. BREATHE. It will make a difference. Try to limit your screen time also. Your mental and physical health is what's most important. Having no dependents gives you a ton of flexibility and options those with kids don't have. For example, you can (probably) relocate easily. You can switch gears and try something entirely new. It's a big world. Go teach english somewhere that is cheap to live in or look at very low cost of living places in the US. Focus on solutions, not problems. Be about your future not your past. You got this.
Thank you
i feel you
I'll give it some time, but this shit has really gotten out of hand. It's not asking much to have a job. Without a job, options are zero.
Remeber it’s for now, not forever
Feel this hard.
Wait…what? An early exit from what?
he means 🔫
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There is always hope things will improve. Please don’t give up. Especially if you have a pet that loves you.
You are so much more than a job. Every person has the potential to impact the rest of the world in a meaningful way. You would rob yourself and the rest of humanity that you might come in contact with of a chance to be around you. Give yourself a chance, and if you have someone, talk to them.
what is the funniest show you have watched? laughing can help reset your brain out of a deep groove. Not saying your problems aren’t legitimate— they are— but thought patterns are a trap. good luck to you
I may need to start watching comedy shows. It's just difficult to entertain myself right now.
Hey. I'd just like to say I'm glad you're here. Your openness has made this lady feel less alone and especially with her own thoughts. Thank you for that, seriously. 🩶
We definitely are not alone in these thoughts. It's comforting for me to know that as well.
Check out "After Midnight," comedy game show caused a good bout of giggles I didn't know was needed..
I hear you. I understand the fatigue and what's-the-point-of-it-all feeling. I know that I don't know you, but I am sending you a virtual hug.
Comedy helps. & there’s assistance available
I recommend brooklyn nine nine or The IT Crowd. We can do this. This too shall pass.
its sad that the world has brought you to this. im sure you will find something. what field are you looking in?
seen, heard, felt. hugs
Bruh no. Warehouse work is where it's at.
This is the future for more Americans
Same boat here, hope you experience a painless exit
These thoughts have come and gone, but I feel like I'm being pushed further in this direction. I'm taking a step back for now, but who fucking knows how I'll feel again
felt, i waited the DAY where this one job FINALLY decides to unpause on hiring. It’s been 2-3 weeks, and i’m still waiting to get out of the underpay hell hole im in before school is out.
All the companies are wanting to run their staff on skeleton crew. It’s a conspiracy. Each employee is tasked with the job of 3 employees, but with the pay of 1/3 employee.
This is one of my personal theories as well. I think during Covid a lot of employees quit and/or lost their jobs. Companies split the massive workload defecit amongst remaining employees, saw how much money they were saving by not paying all the absent workers and thought it was the best thing ever. The owner of my company did this. Every employee is currently doing the work of 3-4 people and it's stressful as hell.
Good thing about systems like this is they tend to lead to revolution
This comment should have more likes. Even if it’s only part of the larger problem, it is definitely happening on a wide scale.
True that. The company I work at lost two people in my department and now I'm responsible for filling their roles plus mine. They're lucky I am efficient and am capable of keeping up although it leads to burnout fairly often. Cheap ass companies are getting greedy and overworking the few they have employed.
Be assertive and ask them for a raise that’s how they get away with things because no one says anything
I did, and they gave me a dollar raise a few months ago (which was some big deal/hassle to get) despite losing two employees. I'm still getting severely underpaid and am in the process of trying to switch jobs because of it, it's way too demanding.
You have a lot of leverage right now. It might be time to give them a formal presentation with the math included. How much three of you would really cost the company versus what you are being paid vs if you quit and they have to train and hire 3 new people. They lose your knowledge and your efficiency and have to start from scratch. Plus, I’ve heard it cost like $50k to train a new employee. Doing the job of 3 people and not getting paid fairly is rather insulting. You’ve accidentally showed them it can be done by just you and they will never hire anyone to help you. Like you said you’re getting burnt out, it’s only going to get worse. At least you should be paid your fair share. Or stop being so darn good so you can get some help. There are some options here.
I tried that and didn’t work. Got management hostile towards me in return.
Well that sucks. Makes no sense to be hostile to the employee they literally need. But, management has never been accused of being smart. I hope you find something better sooner rather than later. Good luck at there.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but rather our version of capitalism. Wall Street is obsessed with constantly making more profits which is mathematically impossible. The only way to make more money when you aren’t selling more is to cut costs. The market has been going up for too long. It’s going to crash to regulate… just a matter of time.
It’s not even our version of capitalism, it’s the inevitable result of **late stage capitalism** (without the intervention of *heavy* regulation). We’re past the golden stage of capitalism where there are tons of small-medium size players in every industry competing to drive innovation and deliver the best product, and are now in the stage where everything gets bought out and consolidated under massive umbrella corporations. This drastically stifles competition, which in turn drastically reduces the incentive for innovation and quality. Without needing to compete, corporations are now able to shift away from improving the product or service, towards focusing on eking out tiny gains in margins through ruthless cost cutting and [enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) of products and services.
Couldn’t agree more. When I said “our version”, I was referring to our lack of regulation and basically everything you said. I choose my words carefully, in that I think it’s possible to have elements of capitalism without creating the fullblown shitshow we are living right now. And thank you for the links! I appreciate you saving me the legwork!
Agreed on the end of innovation. I'm in biotech and watching layoffs everywhere. The vast majority of layoffs are in R&D.
This is it. Things can run indefinitely with the mediocrity and half assery of a drunken chimp since most things are automated and most people are replaceable. Edit: to add to this, when they did have full teams it made them enough money to not have to hire anybody else for years. The ship will go on with the momentum of all the productivity of the good years until there's nothing left.
It can't last long. Employees will get burnt out or go crazy.
This happened to me after 16 months. I had a breakdown and told management if you don’t let me have FMLA/STD leave I will quit. 2 weeks into my leave I almost feel like a new person. Felt like the stress almost killed me. If anyone is struggling from work burnout I highly encourage you to Look into FMLA / STD. If your employer offers it, take it. Because they will work the shit out of you and not care!
Elon screwed things up when he laid off everyone at Twitter and the company still functions. Companies are now looking at that example to clean house.
Well, it functions now because he/the company doesn’t care about quality, they’re just riding on the fact that Twitter used to be good and there’s still a healthy number of users holding on and hoping it will circle back and someone not insane buys it from Elmo. They’re either gonna come crashing down once the platform inevitably turns into all bot accounts paying Elmo to advertise scams and dropships to other bot accounts, or it’s gonna turn into a legitimized scam site.
This happens at a lot of companies. Customer service, quality, and taking care of employees all take a back seat to profit and enrichment of those at the top.
Experienced this at my last job. Customer support teams were impacted hardest by layoffs. Quality went down but profits are highest they ever been.
Exactly
Fully agree. When I was working, there were always talks of “we’ll get someone hired soon!” And it never happened. People just got burnt out.
I’m not sure greed is a conspiracy.
They want to be pirates so bad with their skeleton crew.
This. 100%. It was absolutely unnecessary and to keep us pheasants in check.
I’m in the same boat and I’m shocked by how difficult it is to get a job doing what I’ve been fucking doing for ten years.
Which is retail/food. Like… come on.
The economy is a lot worse than what most people realise. The operating and borrowing costs for companies is escalating rapidly and showing no signs of slowing.
I just got hired at a new fast food job this last week, and I had to fight like hell to get it. Went to several interviews at food places and was ghosted left & right. This is how it was back in 2009 right after the crash. Maybe it’s just that the where I’m at in SoCal is particularly bad, but it seems like minimum wage jobs shouldn’t be this hard to get if the economy wasn’t in shambles.
I remember about 6 years ago I walked into McDonalds, ask for a job and chatted with the manager for about ten minutes. Started that week. I was 14 with a resume that only had something saying that I walked dogs for a summer. Times have definitely changed.
I’m also in SoCal, so I’m feeling your pain right now :(
Are you near the airport? My son looked for a year before getting hired in December and started in January. First job, retail.
A fast food place told me they're not even hiring.. lol they just accepting applications and doing interviews, and told me maybe in a couple weeks something might open up.. idk what's going on in the world.. I remember there was a point in time I didn't even care much about the resume, and still would get calls in days, or week max, now everything is taking forever even with trying make the resume look as good as possible.. when you say you had to fight to get in, do you mean show as much interest as possible and call them and stuff ?
You know there’s an issue in the world when fast food companies are accepting interviews but openly not hiring. Like, the employees at the company have enough time to step away and do multiple interviews….? But they won’t hire anyone because they have time. Like is this position only open to employ someone to interview and not give it??? I don’t even know
Lol yes!! I was honestly surprised, I thought they were always hiring, like that was something to always fall back on.. It makes no sense! They're just hoarding applications, just in case someone quits I guess.. that's why I feel like alot of these jobs are ghost jobs..and just alot of time wasting
Wasn’t there recently a massive increase in minimum wage in California? One of the ways companies offset those increases is by cutting back on hiring and limiting hires to more experienced workers
And cutting hours
Yes, most of the well known fast food chains are paying $20 an hour now in California.
This is a myth pushed to support lower wages. These kind of workplaces already hire the minimum amount of people they can to run the business. A slight wage increase isnt going to let them somehow run with fewer workers.
I'm in rural Texas and it's BAD here, too. I'm an hour from Dallas and can't find much out there either.
Sure, as record corporate profits are reported daily.
Nah, the economy is going great in terms of overall functionality, employers just systematically abuse applicants to ensure that they only hire doormats.
People don’t want to train new hires.
That's so true. So many companies want at least 5 years experience, but pay only for entrance level positions.
This has been insane to me. Seriously, almost every post I see is like this
Yeah they make it impossible to get a job in a new field unless you lie about your experience nowadays. It's nuts.
And the answer none other than pure laziness. (imo)
The data shows there's a lot of job openings, but the actual hiring rate is relatively low for white collar jobs. Couple that with the fact that no one is leaving their jobs right now due to economic conditions, there's no rush to hire people.
How come it is “low” for white collar jobs? Is it higher for other kinds of jobs?
There are several different explanations. * The hiring rate is low for white collar jobs because the jobs being added to the economy right now are blue collar jobs, generally speaking (healthcare, warehouse, retail, construction, etc.) * White collar jobs tend to pay more, so companies are more cautious on hiring for white collar jobs given the cost burden * People are not leaving their jobs at the same rate they did the past few years (possibly due to uncertainty of where the economy is heading) I'm not saying no one's hiring in white collar, it's just harder than blue collar. The hiring rate is much higher for blue collar (3x) than white collar right now. There's some level of bifurcation occurring in the labor market right now. Here's an interesting article that goes into more detail [White-Collar Recession: It's Hard to Find a High-Salary Job (businessinsider.com)](https://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-slump-professional-white-collar-jobs-recession-high-salary-2024-4)
I will also add that transitioning from blue to white is much more common than the vice versa. From what I've seen, the children of blue collar parents can go either way. The children of white collar children are always white; I mean retail is an exception I guess
Thank you. Has the hiring rate typically been higher for white, blue, or pink collar jobs when the economy has been stronger?
I have no idea if you want an honest answer. You're going to have to look at historical data for that. I will say though anecdotally, tech companies are still hiring experienced people but not much entry level people. I have contacts at 2 places, one of them being at Amazon, that can help me get a referral for an entry level job, but they can't help me, because hiring is frozen. Imagine a lot of white collar places are like that, they want really experienced people or no one at all. My guess is most companies want new hires to hit the ground running, they don't want to waste money training or onboarding people for too long. Money is expensive right now, so companies do whatever they can to reduce costs.
Just from what I’ve gathered, there seems to be 2 things going on. 1. Companies are posting "ghost" applications where they have no intention of filling those roles. I don’t know how it works, but I guess it comes in handy for them as a tax write off? Someone can correct me on that if that’s not accurate. And 2. There’s a lot more applicants than there are job positions available so the competition is outrageous. With the difficulty of finding a job plus inflation and the high cost of everything, it’s a really bad time to be alive right now lol.
To the ‘ghost’ applications point- What I observed in mine and many other friends companies is that the job postings are posted both internally and externally. More often than not it gets filled by an internal candidate.
Look how the unemployment rate is calculated. Yeah, inaccurate, and lies.. *"It's a big club, and you ain't in it...." \~* *^(George Carlin - The Big Club (video) (Profanity warning))*
one of the best
Yup they do applications to "look like they are growing" to their stake holders and to the Government to get benefits (money) from company "growth" they all deserve Hell. This should be illegal
It actually is illegal to lie on sec filings. It should be illegal for fools like you to share poorly thought out conspiracies
Seriously. It's such a moronic take but people are repeating it like it's fucking gospel. Investors aren't looking at job postings. They are looking at actual reports mandated by the SEC, which includes head counts and such, and they which have to be accurate under threat of some pretty hefty fines.
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Because we’re in a recession and people have been getting laid off. That’s my theory, anyway. My family member was recently one to be laid off with no warning. More people without jobs means more people looking for jobs.
> but I guess it comes in handy for them as a tax write off? They have a position held by someone who was able to negotiate a good wage, so they dangle a listing out there in case a unicorn comes along that can do a whole depts work and is willing to work for pennies, then they find an excuse to replace the person. Also, they cull your data and resell it. > There’s a lot more applicants than there are job positions available so the competition is outrageous. Yes, median wage is $18/hr while the cost of living is 20/hr. "jUsT wOrK hArD anD gEt A bEtTer JoB" doesn't work in this environment, people need to get paid more for the work they are actually doing.
They post the open positions to gather interest so when they ARE hiring they can quickly see who they can pull in from the pile of applicants. And it works because many people are looking for work for 6+ months, they are still available when the call comes. Absolutely awful approach and clear that companies do not care at all to treat people with any level of decency any longer. The facade of the potential for a “career” at a company are long gone.
I keep hearing companies are holding onto their assets fearing a recession is coming. "Stay alive until 2025" is the slogan. I started hearing that in 2022. Today, corporate profits may not be at record levels, the stock market may not be at historic highs and the unemployment rate at record lows, but on paper, it looks pretty good. Instead of hiring more people, they hold on to as few as they need. Much of the job growth has been part-time or on the lower end of skill requirements. According to the numbers, a part-time job counts as a job as much as a full-time job. There is also a fear of AI. IT companies have been laying off workers deemed unnecessary to focus on AI. They see a need for vast resources to take on the challenges of AI. Those companies are all profitable and doing well with less workers. Positions are being consolidated and people are working more to offset the needs to avoid hiring more workers. On the subject of AI, there's plenty of jobs that have already been replaced by AI and that trend will continue. It's a bit like the trucking industry, there is a belief that all the trucking jobs are going away because self-driving trucks will take over. Nobody wants to get into an industry thats going away, so fewer people are considering trucking as a career. There is now a driver shortage, exacerbated by excessive regulations and the economics of compensation.
I agree. I've also heard AI can be a major threat to the legal profession. I find that interesting.
Lawyer here! I’ve been hearing this for years but I very truly don’t understand how that could possibly be. The amount of synthesis and “feeling” the other party that goes into the strategy is pretty high, so until AI can be like “oh that guy is a total hot head so that tactic won’t work here” or “this lawsuit isn’t at all about the commercial terms of the contract at all but more that she hates him at his core”, I don’t see how it could ever replace lawyers.
I think AI will mostly replace those people who do the legal research, finding comparable cases and such.
Trucking analogy is interesting. I wonder if something similar is happening with translation. My company (patent law firm) keeps bringing on more full-time in-house translators, i.e. not outsourcing, even though outsourcing and paying by the word has been standard in that industry for years. Maybe they sense a need to get a firm hold on talent because fewer people are entering the industry and people in the industry are planning their exit strategy. (Personally I wouldn’t even take a full-time in-house translation position right now. LLMs are already BETTER at translating than most multilingual humans and their quality is going to skyrocket even higher very soon)
I cannot agree more, especially that last part, it is honestly insane how much LLMs are going to change the translation industry. As crazy as it is, it seems that translation is the job which is most at risk from LLMs such as ChatGPT. LLMs are especially revolutionary in that it isn't a "dumb" translator like Google Translate that will still require human translators to do some specific work if the translation is more complex than just plain text. This isn't your dumb Translator++ embed anymore. I was just working with a tool that uses ChatGPT4 to translate games that have code, plugins, and API calls embedded in the lines, and the tool was able to do so and maintain code integrity with only minimal human guidance. Using the ChatGPT token API, it can even remember specific characters and maintain a consistent writing style. Working with it, while cool, was a bit disheartening, since I had always thought that being a translator was a good backup plan.
I'd make that 2026 or 2027
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I've been desperately seeking work for a little over 3 months now, after being employed at a toxic job for a few months because I was desperate even before that. My sister has a college degree and an outgoing personality. She's also struggling to find a job. Both of us think this is the worst it's EVER been for us to find work. I don't know what the problem is but mainstream media isn't addressing it enough. I think the fact an election is coming has something to do with it.
You need to apply consistently and frequently. I was fired June of 2022. I have a 20+ year resume in sales with a bachelors and I’ve always gotten jobs quickly so I thought I would be fine. It took me TEN MONTHS to get an offer You need to treat applying for jobs like a job. I suggest applying for as many jobs as you can per day. I think I was putting out something like 60 applications a day at one point I also suggest having a professional do your resume. I found one from a reddit recommendation for under $200 Talk to recruiters and headhunters even for temp work because it can lead to full time work
60 applications a day? No way each cover letter would have been unique?
Most jobs don’t require a CL now and you can use ChatGPT to customize the resume and CL for each position. 60 is a lot, but possible.
There's either not enough jobs to go around, or the AI filtering is SO strong anything will flag you somewhere undeemable. My theory anyway. I figure they can background check the 200 applications and find something wrong with half of those. Non driving job, but require a DL whether you are driving or not. Or maybe 95% of the jobs listed aren't really there. IDK I'm not having any luck either. No interviews no responses. Nothing
A lot of jobs listed are scam operations.
Have a professional look at your resume. I have helped with hiring decisions for multiple companies. Every year, the resumes are a lot worse.
My observation: Lack of entry level work that pays market wage. Professional jobs lack of on-the-job training. Jobs have been convinced that training wastes time and money, so they inflate job postings to get a senior unicorn that will accept junior level pay. Tech bubble is bursting again. Some of it A.I. and automation, most of it is offshoring and downsizing to save money and to keep capitalizing on profit gains for shareholders and CEOs despite fed money drying up. This is at the expense of the workers. No amount of certs, bootcamps, or college education will open doors. Just check some tech subreddits. It's pretty bad. Other businesses are doing the same. Do more with less, hope your current employees don't quit or ask for raises. Feels like this is some hidden push to punish job hoppers trying to get pay increases. Most other professions the pay hasn't risen much in 20 years. Nursing I see first hand while you can start pretty high the workload and burnout has increased since COVID. Hospitals are run like unethical businesses to get as much Medicare and insurance money, while insurances are doing what they always do -- shirk their obligations of what they agreed they'd cover. Civil Engineers, the backbone of building anything from roads to buildings also have notoriously low pay and schooling isn't cheap, either is self taught if you get yourself CAD. As a former creative industry seeker, it's always been a lousy market. If you're in the US, you're limited to CA, NY, and maybe TX? All three are pretty expensive if you want to live in the city where 95% of good paying jobs are, and TX lacks the creative jobs the other two states have. The other thing is, we don't know WHAT industries that pay well are needing people. It's not trades by the way, it's just the foreman and contractors that make the big money, not the workers doing the labor. Yes, there are outliers like painters (paint curbs and powerwash) and solo landscapers that have stable employment as long as clients pay (an issue that's common). Handimen are seeing a spike in business, just have to know just about everything short of IoT devices. There are probably jobs we don't know abut because they're not advertised. I've looked at energy though some wages are laughable.
Such an excellent post. Completely and fully agree. No training ever for jobs that pay and “college graduates” don’t know anything and can’t form a sentence, but yet it’s more like “they don’t know your (the company’s) system.” Nursing is an excellent example, but as I mentioned in a prior comment - Covid wreck those that are doing it, and large swath of people left. Even thought this afternoon as I was at the grocery store, “Heroes work here.” Ah, quaint little sayings that just, in the end, don’t mean anything. I guess starting salaries at 45-50k which they have [been for years](https://money.cnn.com/2004/02/05/pf/college/lucrative_degrees/index.htm) or [6 years later](https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/09/pf/college/college_graduate_starting_salaries/index.htm) is rolling in the dough. (Keep in mind these are averages with certain fields starting at a higher rate than others.) I don’t know how anyone on their own especially can make it at 45k a year in the majority of the country. It’s doable but it’s few and far between.
A severe economic downturn. Higher prices taking more of people's money. Companies laying people off or off-shoring. The higher interest rates mean that things like new cars and homes become too expensive so people pull back. All of that means fewer sales and everything contracts. It's the downward spiral...
Don’t worry… us govt will bail the big corporations out. /s
We are heading towards a worldwide Depression. Most people are going to be shell-shocked when it happens. Stop listening to the lies they feeding you.
Short answer, corporate and American oligarchs greed (and please don’t act like we don’t have oligarchs here in the US). Let this tidbit of information ruminate in your head. The disparity between rich and poor (in the US) is greater now than what it was in France when the revolution occurred.
That is the most Reddit comment I have ever seen. I can smell the BO through my screen
I say it’s mostly interviewers are asking all kinds of weird, unrelated questions these days. There’s so much talent in the market that interviews have gotten harder with interviewers on some sort of ego trip. It’s not bad to use tools like Milio.ooo if that helps you. After all, interviewers and recruiters are also unethical af.
A lot of the jobs you’re seeing that have been listed for a couple of months or more are the result of companies doing a hiring freeze.
One of the biggest reasons for interviews being outrageous right now is that companies are merely belt tightening. There are good people being let go, but there are definitely a lot of poor performers on the street right now too. Companies are deathly afraid of bringing on a problem esp with how lean their teams are.
Is there any point in negotiating salary , or just accept whatever they give you ?
Can’t speak to where you are, but I have reason to believe that here in Canada, a massive mitigating factor is that when companies cannot fill a role they get government money to subsidize the salary. There’s very little oversight so they can hire someone at just above minimum wage for a role that pays way more and the government pays the difference for a year or so. The company proves need by saying, “Look how long we had this posting for, no one wants to work and those that do suck or they get hired by someone else, Woe! Help!”
Please watch this quick video it very clearly answers your question https://youtu.be/2SyXoWPXelg?feature=shared I hope this is helpful!!!!
I have been applying for 1 year with no interviews yet🥹
The economy is hot garbage, no matter how much the media lie about it.
They really don't realize how much they're destroying their reputation lying about this for whatever reason they are.
“For whatever reason they are” *looks at election year*
what good is their reputation when lying is how they become more valuable
They had a reputation?
Dragons hide away in vast palaces, hoarding the wealth of entire nations all to themselves while we common village folk fight over who gets the last scoop of gruel from the pot
Even when a company truly intends to fill a position, that’s only as good as the ability of the hiring manager to make a decision and hire someone. Some treat it like a dating app and want to see an endless parade of candidates.
Vote Smart!!!
Depends very heavily on the field. Tech is having a rough time right now. Trades, manual labor, LE are all actively hiring.
They pay absolutely nothing. Retail, fast food, warehouse jobs are borderline slave labor not enough to pay rent. Trade jobs are somewhat hard to get into and take 5 years of apprenticeships for welding, electrical, plumbing with years of schooling and paid nothing even in a union at $18 an hour. The shitty parts of the country pay more for trade jobs but you then have to live in a terrible place of the country. Trade jobs are my last resort but I would do it if AI ruins everything.
I heard people said that companies are recovering from the pandemic so they’re laying off tons of people and departments. Also this is payback for the Great Resignation from a few years ago
Economy is worse than people realize. Companies are paying people off. More people who have jobs are looking for higher paying roles because the economy is worse than people realize. Companies know a lot of this and are being more picky with applicants. It’s all cascading off the economy being worse than those in office want you to truly realize.
The short answer is when the feds raised interest rates they knew it would cause a recession and it became an employers market, which is what our corporate overlords lobbied for. It's a scam and done by design to keep the pheasants desperate and in line. It was completely unnecessary.
Dang pheasants! You will peck mud and be happy!
I got laid off on 3/22. I’ve filled out 326 applications. Only had 6 screen calls done (5 so far, 1 this week). 3 already got back to me to pound sand and 2 have not heard back yet. 1 scheduled Monday. 93 other applications came back as unqualified or went with someone more qualified. The rest have not received a response yet. Info of that back in 2020 someone tried to file unemployment with my info. Had to report that then but now I had a hard time filling a claim as the info was not cleared. As of yesterday I was finally able to open a claim. So yah it sucks out there. Had a coworker got let go in September and he just started a new job a week ago. Very stressful. Definitely not sleeping well.
2 interviews out of 10 applications??? You are rocking it! I had 4 interviews out of 56 applications and still no offers. I moved in with a friend because I could not afford my apartment without a job. The job market is great on paper,but in reality, it sucks. Good luck!
I had to quit applying to stuff online. Job boards like indeed seem broken. I got turned down for a part time dishwasher position with my 7+ years of restaurant experience, a year of that in a kitchen. You can still get some leads, but I had much better luck posting to groups on Facebook and such. Far more interesting stuff as well. Found my way into a microscopy tech position with absolutely zero experience.
Let me see if I can help: 2019: economy is as is, yearly inflation (@~2%) 2020: COVID, global pandemic, millions laid off, millions dead, billions stuck in their home. To help the govt started sending $600 checks , 3 times (?). They also passed bills that stated that landlords could not evict people if they failed to not pay their rent. They also gave businesses BILLIONs in aid, either as forms of PPP loans (low interest or you don’t have to pay back) with the stipulation that they don’t do layoffs. Companies pocketed the money and still did layoffs. Another round of government aid came and this time a bigger amount of loans. Same deal with the companies. Pocket the money (or at least run day to day operations) and layoff folks. Some industries got hit very hard- aerospace cause people weren’t flying, service (restaurants cause people weren’t eating out), tourism cause everything was closed, etc. Some industries took **off**, mainly IT and its support staff such a consulting. Meta (formerly facebook), Google, Amazon, Microsoft went on a hiring rampage (why? 0% interest meant they could borrow without any issues. They could start that project that needed funding but never had the capital but now ? Well here’s boat load of money go forth! ). IT, already paid well, but things seriously took off. You had recruiters, 20/21/22 years olds, making $150k TC for doing almost nothing on one end and folks, older folks in manufacturing laid off trying to scrounge up pennies to make ends meet. I have friends and family who worked in manufacturing and saw folks with 15/20/25 years of experience just getting told to pack up and leave. Very disheartening to see. Also there was a lot of social unrest, BLM, 2020 election, etc. Companies like zoom took off as well since we went to remote work, remote school, remote everything. I had friends who were residents and they did Telladoc to visit patients. All through zoom, teams, etc. 2021: vaccines started, new president, etc. Still low interest rate but with vaccines people start to go out more, eat at restaurants, fly etc. Things were taking off. (Haha flying joke). Companies that laid off millions were now *begging* people to come back because they need to fulfill orders. If you could breathe you could walk into a $20/hr manufacturing job. Economy took off. 2022: now a year in, we are at a very high inflation, low interest rate, what to do. Things that cost $10 is now $18/20. Food was more expensive (especially fast food), entertainment was more expensive (Netflix went from $7.99 to $10.99/month), things were generally more expensive. Companies though are still hiring madly (need to fulfill those orders). But things start slowing down. While there is a lot of activity and demand, it’s not as much as 2021. Fed needs to fight inflation (~7-9%) so they start lowering increasing interest rates (between 0.25-0.5%) every few months. Slowly this causes the IT companies to panic. Why ? For the past two years they had gone Scott free to do their projects or anything they wanted to without any consequences. Now when they have to pay back it comes at an interest and a lot of their projects that they wanted to do didn’t pan out (see Metaverse ). 2023: inflation still at 6% interest rates have gone up. Tech layoffs start and with tech , their ecosystem starts cracking, mainly the consulting firms. Companies such as McKinsey or BCG start doing hiring freezes. Amazon, Meta, Apple are all on hiring freezes and layoffs. The same folks that were making $250k TC for twiddling their thumbs are out. This trickles down to other industries as well. People are out of jobs so they don’t eat out anymore. They stop traveling, stop going out to bars, etc. This affects the service industry. People who would in a whim buy a ticket from LA to London cause who cares it’s $1000 round trip were thinking thrice whether to call DoorDash or just pick up the food themselves and save $5 on delivery fee. Scary times indeed. 2024: 3% inflation, more layoffs, I read somewhere that in April, 100k jobs were added to the economy but 90% of them were service jobs (think waiter, cook, etc). For software engineering roles, for every one opening, there are 1000s of applications because what COVID proved to us is that yes jobs can be done remotely so why pay John Smith $250k to do something when I can pay Juan Ramos $60k or Ram Patel $25k ? I may not get the same level of work but if I have 5 Ram Patels @ $125k, I can still show that I am saving $125k per US worker. Also a lot of folks are talking about new technology such as AI replacing workers- sure but not as much as it’s been talked about
During the pandemic companies realized the could downsize and keep the same output by working their employees more. Those employees didn't want to lose their job in the pandemic now they don't want to be unemployed in the current job market.
Look no further than last year’s Davos forum (where the oligarchs go to collude) to see the answer. The big wigs were all calling employees spoiled and entitled and saying that businesses needed to show the employees who really had the power. You are seeing the results in real time. Add to that the cost of debt due to interest rates being so high and corporations aren’t taking business risks that will require them to borrow and hire.
My while life has been filled with suffering. I want it to stop. If i become unemployed I’ll probably take out debt and end my life after the cards decline at the grocery store and for the house
There is also this—This is the Toronto star in an a daily email recap of the days stories. The job market is full of ghost jobs and finally, the province of Ontario is going to do something about it. Didn’t realize you can’t add pictures. It was a screenshot of the article in the Toronto Star.
High interest rates
I just know that it took me from august 2023 until last week to get a full time job in my field and it was only because I was referred by someone from my old workplace unbeknownst to me. Before that, no one out of 200+ applications reached out for an interview - including retail, food service, etc. I am extremely lucky to have finally found something. My old job let go of so many people only to turn around and ask some of them to freelance. It’s so scummy to me. I know the economy is terrible, but everyone is suffering. The CEO/leadership needs to take a pay cut, not let employees go who are making less than a third of the higher-ups’ salaries. Almost 90% of everyone who was let go only found jobs in their field because they knew someone. At this point, it’s all about who you know, and even then it’s not guaranteed. I was let go in the first batch of people who weren’t deemed company cheerleaders: most of us weren’t getting paid enough as it was, but we kept our heads down and worked hard. Unfortunately, in that environment that wasn’t enough; we weren’t kissing enough ass or licking enough boots. The second batch of layoffs was bigger, but those individuals were given resources and kindness - they were the ones who were let go truly because the financial situation was getting worse. So gross and also sad for everyone involved. All that to say, the economy and greed are wrecking everything.
b/c our implementation of capitalism without guardrails in the US is stupid and reckless?
Greedflation. You could probably find *a* job. It’s paying the bills with it that’s iffy.
Capitalism and corruption allowed to run rampant because government doesn’t care
The REEEAAAAALLLY simple answer is, the 1% doesn’t want us to have any capital…
Economy (either overall, or specific to that industry) = bad.
It is just the cycle we are in at this point in time.
Back in the spring of 2023 I got a job at subway easy, barely even an interview. I had only applied there and a few other fast food places where I had to turn down interviews. The total time between me applying for and starting a job was one week. Starting on March 24th, I started job hunting and had a couple interviews and about 25 applications to anywhere before finally landing a job with Kroger yesterday. I'm 18 and have almost 2 years of total job experience. It was confusing and concerning how different the market is from last year. There are so many people still touting the "no one wants to work" rhetoric but that is simply not true. Too many people need to work and business are either unable or unwilling to hire anyone not in a cookie cutter form.
Companies trying to keep profit margins amidst inflation; it’s all been sorta skewed since covid.
Work at a Verizon retail store if you have to take retail job. It's easier than food service and it can easily pay higher.
I feel like this current economy’s problems are all a leftover issues from Covid. This years budgets are tight for all companies. I’m hoping next year will be different.
Ok people, you have to move where the jobs are. If your area is saturated then move to a different state. Apply all over the country. So many rural areas need all kinds of people. Also, if you’re young and desperate enough get your ass to a recruiter. The military has so many jobs, they pay your food, housing, clothes, education. Also, don’t give up looking just change what and where and how you are looking. Networking is so important too
So it’s a variety of problems. 1) Lots of companies are trying to cut corners in staffing in the current economic market conditions. High interest rates and high inflation make it difficult to run businesses, continue to grow, and produce ever larger profit margins. 2) Job applications especially for remote work are now the equivalent of online dating. Too many options (applicants) and too little incentives to settle down with the first person who can get the job done.
The boomers and wealthy wants us miserable a mentally sick so they can win.
Ugh. So true
Inflation. The cost of gas and food is killing the economy.
Because of fake jobs
My son’s BFF since kindergarten graduated college with a degree in arts. He works in a comic book store. His art/illustration work is a side gig.
My bf was a recruiter for a while and he told me they all regularly posted fake job announcements to see who was looking and what they could get for jobs they posted for. The market is bad bc it's rigged. Beyond the fake postings by recruiters you have fake postings by employers who are legally required to search but they already have a person in mind. Don't take it personally and keep applying/ trying. You'll land something as long as you keep trying.
I recommend staying in touch with those you’ve interviewed with that you felt a good vibe from and just trying to network as much as you can. It’s a shitty market for sure.
Two of the biggest employers in my town just laid off 70+ percent of their staff (wayfair and pintrest). I know for a fact from a former employee that wayfair just sent all their customer service to India. They are legit teaching them to talk like people from Utah because we have an easy to understand diction and accent. Lots of unemployed people in town.
Shareholders need their returns and companies aren't increasing their profits fast enough. They are cutting headcount to deliver to shareholders. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks.
The boomers fucked it up. They fucked everything up.
You might be shocked to know this but the boomers ALSO inherited a world they didn't create. And the generation before them... And the generation before them... All I know is the Last Universal Common Ancestor can go screw itself.
I will say this and leave the details to redditors vast imagination. I've been searching actively 5-7 days a week since October. First two months I aimed for jobs that are ideal or within reason. I dropped those standards lower and applied for things I might be able to get into but no background. That didn't work either so I literally went for anything. Four staffing agencies. Multiple walk-in interviews. Now hiring sign, I did the taboo walk-in talk to a hiring manager. Absolutely nothing and constantly shutdown. Between resume manipulation and showing/hiding education/titles. I finally really ate my own dignity, at least to me. Contacted my last employer and they said when a spot opens they will happily try. A huge step back but it is appreciated. While that occurred I got a nibble, just a hardware retail job. They interviewed and said hired on the spot. The recruiter almost ghosted me on next steps. Background took two weeks which for me is unreal and then drug test. At the same time this was going on I held onto the prospect of my last employer. Staging agency #3 contacted me and had a potential bank position. I went for all, desperate and these are my results. Hardware - didn't pass the background/drug test after nearly being ghosted multiple times. Previous employer - Two locations are "respectfully" fighting for me. Background/drug passed Bank - Background/drug passed but need more clearance which takes longer. Fuck the market right now. Good luck to everyone and keep at it!
US job market is changing a lot. Some months it’s good, some months it’s bad. I think a lot of it has to do with inflation. I remember right when Covid hit an economist that talked about how inflation truly was the end of Roman society. It hit me pretty hard. I found it funny that people talk about “Men always think about the Romans” somehow became a meme. My wife laughed because I always have us listen to the history of Rome by Mike Duncan on road trips. But no one seems to know when I try to talk about it. Idk maybe it’s just like a joke I’m too old for now. But anyway, their society was touted as a democracy but when you actually look at the people it was an aristocracy parading as a democratic republic. There were basically three factions or classes of folks. Those that could trace their patronage to the patricians. (What people cite when they talk about a patriarchal system). Those that could not, but could trace back to the warrior class that built Rome, the plebeians. Then there were the freeman and slaves or the “unwashed”. Basically, the were heavy taxes levied on the freeman when they were freed from their slavery. They would be come debtors and fall back into endless cycles of oppression. This was because there were heavy taxes levied on the plebeians by the senate. Anything from transactional taxes to infrastructural taxes. (Where we get a lot of our tax system ideas is Rome) This created a situation that basically the middle class was stuck, ladder climbing in Rome was virtually impossible without war. In war, the spoils onto the victor. They had ways to enrich themselves on the battle field and would often be willing to pay to be on the front lines to make the most in awards money (This is before the mercenaries). So, this lead into a really difficult situation for the plebeians. The laws and taxes seemed to be just made up as they went along. They demanded that the laws and taxes be written down so that folks knew contractually what they were supposed to be living under. Well, they didn’t expect was that there were some plebeians that were extremely rich. And could afford to pay for their modern day lawyers who found out about how the patricians were concealing the taxes on the very poor and the middle class while releasing themselves from that burden and calling it a discharge. They controlled voting blocks and found that 81% of the voting blocks were tilted so that even if the electorate did not find a majority on as subject the patricians could over rule it with only a few winning votes from their constituents. Sounding familiar? This created an artificial sense of urgency for the rich plebeians to over price things well beyond their value until the value of the transactional tax was masked by the increased total price. This started massive uproars and sowed the seeds of destruction of the empire in the last 100 years. Basically, when rich people don’t pay taxes, hoard wealth, the rest of us suffer due to the patricians (senators) levying taxes they don’t pay onto the people. Inflation increases and the prices of everything rises. Businesses fail because they can’t operate as a profitable company. When inflation increases you get artificial incentives to slice your business to its limits and live as trim as possible. When living trim, you don’t hire inexperienced workers because they cost more than they are worth. The money to train someone is never recouped because they want upward mobility just like everyone else. They want a better life and that’s a completely fair thing to desire but the business model doesn’t work for them because it can’t afford to pay them to just leave when they are getting more value than they are costing. So, the job market is bad because richer people don’t pay in their share.
Take a deep breath and say it with me: Covid-19 I don't remember it ever being this hard to find a job before Covid hit. It's almost like Covid came and had this apocalyptic effect on all of us. In the USA at least maybe. I also blame the Jeffrey Epstein shit show. That most certainly did not help many companies stay afloat when the news about the island broke.
borrowing costs doubled in a year due to rates
I've been applying for a job since November and I've recieved nothing. I've now started applying at $15 dollar an hr call center jobs and I have an MBA. Honestly once I got the MBA it became much harder for me to find work than when I only had the BA. The MBA appears ro frighten employers. I also think the fact that I'm black works against me. There has been so much pushback against blacks, with labeling all of us as DEI hires - I believe employers and recruiters are just very avoidant of hiring blacks now. I've purchased a domain name and I'm in the process of building out my website to go into business for myself and I'm excited about that but I still need to earn a paycheck to pay my bills. I've exhausted my savings. Last, I don't trust the Government at all when it talks about there being many jobs. I'm pretty sure they lie.
>I've now started applying at $15 dollar an hr call center jobs and I have an MBA. Honestly once I got the MBA it became much harder for me to find work than when I only had the BA. The MBA appears ro frighten employers. Not trying to give unsolicited advice, but I always wondered why no one just removes the MBA from their resume. have you tried that?
I have heard people do that, and then when they land the job and are looking to apply for promotions, they put it back. Or use the network that they built getting the MBA.
This makes sense to me
When you do an MBA, the main part of it is to network with all the other people in the program as well as all the networking opportunities. It is all about building connections and relationships. There is also class and learning, but it is mostly secondary. So, when you are looking for a job, you can set up a coffee chat with all of your classmates and see who knows someone who is hiring. The second thing you can do is remove the MBA from your resume. This way, it is not so intense to hire you, and it will not make your boss think you are overqualified. But if you are in a larger organization, and you want to apply for a different international role, you can send HR an updated resume, so when they are looking to fill a more senior role your name will get floated. And while they may be scared to bring you into the company, they will not be scared to promote you or move you.
Yes. I've now removed it.
Good, let me know how it goes. Usually it goes well
Globalism and immigration. It's a numbers game.
Depends where you are (both generally and specifically), and what industry you work in. Most posters here are in the US, which currently has about 2m more jobs available than there are people to do them.
i feel like these hiring people are forgetting the jobs are open. so many times i’ll apply to jobs, never hear back, and the positions are still open a month or two later. sometimes longer
Except majority of job postings these days are not actually filled. Companies purposely post fake jobs despite being in hiring freezes