Why Is It So Hard To Get a Job Right Now?

My spouse has been unemployed for the last 14 months. And 15 months ago, I lost my full-time job and had to immediately pivot to freelancing to support us both.

It’s cool! We’re good! We are millennials forged in the fires of multiple once-in-a-lifetime economic disasters. We’re Frugal and Good With Money and totally unsurprised to find ourselves yet again scraping our way up from the bottom.

… is what I would’ve told you nine, or even six months ago.

But now, more than a year into being a single-income household, cracks are starting to show in our optimism. My husband, a college-educated, highly talented, experienced worker, has applied to more than 300 jobs. He made it to the interview stage of 10 of those. He made it to the final interview for 5 jobs. And he has yet to receive a single job offer. (Completely unrelated, uh… join our Patreon!)

He’s not alone. Not being alone is part of the problem. Millions of people are going through the same struggle right now, flooding the job market with too much competition for too few job openings.

We got a message from a follower who goes by Cloud Structures that read,

“I did everything ‘right’: I went to a great school, did all the internships, worked hard, and… nothing. I’ve applied to hundreds and hundreds of jobs in the past few years. I’ve gotten career coaching, gotten certifications, networked, and chatted, and schmoozed. I feel insane.“

I really don’t blame them for feeling insane. It’s hard out there for a jobseeker! This whole process has made my spouse and all my unemployed friends (of whom there are disturbingly many at the moment) feel completely worthless, unemployable, and disrespected.

My husband has been ghosted by companies and recruiters alike. He’s received form rejection letters for applications when he was perfectly, 100% qualified, without even a screening interview.

I don’t think it’s dramatic to say that we’re currently experiencing an epidemic of unemployment during one of the worst job markets in a century. So today I’m gonna roll up my sleeves and unpack just why that is.

High competition, low hiring rates

When we talk about how hard it is to get a job, we’re really discussing two interconnected issues:

1. The unemployment rate, i.e., how many people are in need of a job.
2. The hiring rate, i.e., how many jobs are in need of a person.

When you have a lot of #1 and a little of #2 at the same time, it leads to a perfect storm for jobseekers. The opposite condition—a labor shortage, as we’ve explained—is great news for jobseekers!

Let’s say that here in Bitch Nation, we have 10 people looking for jobs, and 100 open positions. The odds are in favor of the jobseekers, as hiring managers will be far less picky about things like qualifications, experience, and cultural fit.

Only have about 60% of the qualifications an employer is looking for? Fine! We’ll give you on-the-job training! When can you start???

Now let’s flip the numbers. There are 100 jobless citizens of Bitch Nation looking for work, but only 10 job openings. Those hiring managers can afford to hold out for their dream employees. They’ll have their pick of 100% qualified, talented, and available jobseekers. In that environment, a jobseeker has to not only look like a perfect fit in the application process, but also beat out the other 99 candidates.

(Note: There is only one kind of job in Bitch Nation: Happy Dog Enrichment Coordinator. So don’t you go telling our citizens they should’ve majored in ChatGPT Fluffing or whatever!)

The cycle of employment

On the surface, it might seem like unemployment is a symptom of a tough job market, not a cause. But the two realities—unemployment and difficulty finding work—are in fact part of a broader cycle.

In a normal employment ecosystem, people regularly leave jobs for a variety of reasons. They retire, they get fired, they take a job elsewhere, they get promoted within the company, or they even get laid off for budgetary reasons. In those situations, their former roles remain open and waiting for someone else to fill them.

But in times like these, the normal ecosystem is disrupted.

When companies lay off large numbers of employees, it means jobs aren’t left open due to people moving on of their own volition or getting fired. The positions themselves are entirely eliminated. They disappear like a fart in the fuckin wind, leaving no open roles for a jobseeker to fill.

This leads to there being more jobseekers than open jobs. It’s a surplus in the labor force, and that ain’t good for jobseekers. It means longer periods of unemployment for individuals, who are then more willing to accept shitty job offers out of desperation.

Over on our Patreon (where dreams come true and dogs never die), our followers are discussing the abysmal job market. On subpar job offers, Brigit explained,

“I even had to turn one down I was offered right before this because they wanted 1) an answer in 24 hours, and 2) provided no insurance, just a stipend. I can’t afford to do that anymore mentally /emotionally /financially.”

Current unemployment by the numbers

Normally I’d just go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the federal agency that tracks things like employment numbers) to find out how many people are currently unemployed and seeking work.

But I can’t. Because last summer the numbers were so bad that our narcissistic, clinically incompetent commander in chief had a hissy fit and fired the head of the BLS. Apparently rising unemployment and joblessness makes him and his economic policies look bad. And we can’t have that!

According to the Associated Press:

“[Trump’s] charge that the data was faked is an explosive one that threatens to undercut the political legitimacy of the U.S. government’s economic data, which has long been seen as the ‘gold standard’ of economic measurement globally. Economists and Wall Street investors have for decades generally accepted the data as free from political bias.”

In other words, this nearsighted, disastrously selfish decision effectively destroyed our ability to trust the BLS’s future data collection and analysis. So we literally don’t know exactly how bad the job market currently is. But we will still use the federal government’s data to get some idea.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (which we shall refer to as FRED, hereafter), the unemployment rate is currently at 4.3%. Which honestly doesn’t sound so bad! It’s below the ten-year average of 4.6% and the fifty-year average of 6.1%. We’ve certainly had much higher rates—TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE PANDEMIC—14.8% at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, for example. But we’ve also had lower rates: 3.7% in 2019. Which was… notably before COVID.

(This graph, specifically.)

So why does it feel so much worse than these numbers suggest?

Why is it so hard to get a damn job right now?

There’s no one culprit. This is a Murder on the Orient Express type deal: the corpse of American joblessness can be laid at the feet of any number of killers! (Spoiler alert for a century-old book.)

I’m going to go over a few of the (un)usual suspects contributing to our current unique environment. Because if you’re currently out of work and frantically hunting for an income, I think it’s important to understand that none of this right now is normal.

You’re not competing in a fair contest. You’re in the Unemployment Olympics: running through a razor-sharp obstacle course that uses fake job listings to slow you down, software to eliminate you from the contest at the merest excuse, and the most corrupt federal administration in United States history to just light the whole field on fire and cancel the medal ceremony.

1. Job opportunities aren’t universal

Just because a job is available doesn’t mean it’s available for all jobseekers.

The industries hiring the most new employees right now are healthcare, warehousing, transportation, and retail, with fully half of those jobs being in healthcare. This is one explanation for FRED’s unemployment rate not seeming so bad: industries are hiring, but they’re not hiring just anyone.

So if you’re not qualified to work in those sectors… get fucked I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The workaround

In this situation, it’s a good idea to seek out retraining or a new degree or certification. But that often takes time and resources that jobseekers simply don’t have. The idea of going back to school while living on savings or severance fills me with the sort of nausea previously only achieved by watching someone sign up for a Victoria’s Secret credit card!

Nonetheless, here is our advice on making a successful career transition:

• My Career Transition Succeeded When I Gave Fewer Fucks, Made More Friends, and Had More Fun 
• Season 2, Episode 11: “I Tripped and Fell into a Career I Don’t like. How Do I Reinvent Myself?” 

2. The DOGE of it all

I don’t want to downplay the hundreds of thousands of literal deaths that can be attributed to the hack-and-slash job perpetrated by Elongated Muskrate and his clown car of barely literate, barely adult fuckbros. I sincerely wish “global medical genocide” was not a term I had to learn this year. But the damage DOGE also did to the American government has had ripple effects throughout the job market.

For one thing, all those highly qualified professionals summarily laid off from the federal government for no fucking reason are now searching for jobs in the private sector. That increases competition among skilled workers.

For another: the federal jobs they left no longer exist. DOGE eliminated more than 260,000 good, steady jobs a year ago during the Great Chainsawing.

AND ONE MORE THING: In addition to shutting down entire government agencies and laying off thousands of federal employees, the DOGE project also cut funding to nonprofits that relied on federal money for large portions of their operating budgets. Those organizations have also had to “reduce headcount,” which is but one of many charming euphemisms for “firing people” I’ll be using throughout this screed.

Incidentally, this last side effect of DOGE hit my husband’s industry particularly hard.

Our beloved patron Plutastar told us that DOGE was directly responsible for layoffs at their company:

“Despite whatever reasons management decided to let me go, I think my former coworkers and I would have ended up still working at the company if DOGE and Elon Musk’s team didn’t decide to mess with our federal clients, which impacted the contract budget for us and they had to downsize.”

Another of our dear patrons, Brunehilda, explains how this went down at the research institution where they work:

“I work at an academic medical research center. Hiring is almost non-existent for research staff. We were in the news last year when the Trump administration cancelled a lot of our funding. Some of the grants were restored later but the chaos and uncertainty led to an indefinite hiring freeze for most roles.”

The jobs all of these talented former employees previously filled aren’t open to new hires. They’re just gone.

The workaround

Former federal employees and nonprofit workers affected by DOGE are part of a really, really nonexclusive club. And my best advice to this club seems a little counterintuitive when what you’re looking for is a paid position: volunteer.

There are still government jobs at the state and local levels, as well as independent nonprofits and private universities that don’t rely as much on funding from the feds. But the competition will be fierce, and you’re far more likely to get your foot in the door when you have a proven track record of volunteering for causes in your local community. Here’s more of our advice:

• How to Frame Volunteering on Your Resume When You’ve Never Had a Job
• Season 2, Episode 9: “I Use My Free Time to Volunteer. Should I Focus on Making Money Instead?” 

3. The false promise of Artificial Intelligence

I hate AI, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.

Among its many sins is the way it has caused CEOs to drastically cut employees. These Business Idiots (to steal Ed Zitron’s technical term) believe in the (false) promise that through the magic of large language models, they can accomplish more with fewer employees. As our patron Kim told us,

“The tech job market is collapsing—AI, even with the debates about if it can actually do the job, is actively being used as justification to get rid of employees… especially older workers.”

The evidence that AI is contributing to unemployment is pretty damning. We once again return to FRED, which shows that “occupations with higher AI exposure experienced larger unemployment rate increases between 2022 and 2025.”

And those occupations with higher AI exposure? It’s tech: data analysts, software developers, UX designers. So-called “knowledge workers,” whose jobs have traditionally been some of the safest even during periods of economic shitfuckery. The sort of jobs that require a lot of education and training.

The workaround

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

… is what I will NEVER tell you when it comes to AI! The only way we defeat this monster is through overwhelming solidarity. Resistance is not futile! Fight back!

But I will tell you to “know thy enemy.”

If your only job prospects are within the cult of large language models, familiarize yourself with how the fucking technology works so you can pass undetected among the rest of the congregation. Then get good at showing how AI can’t do what you can do. You’re better than the machine: show it off. Here’s more advice:

• Woke at Work: How to Inject Your Values into Your Boring, Lame-Ass Job 
• Season 1, Episode 5: “I Don’t Love My Job, but It Pays Well. Should I Quit—or Tough It Out?” 

4. Dysfunctional hiring software

Speaking of AI, employers are also increasingly using it in hiring practices for everything from screening to responses to interviews. It’s creating a robot gatekeeper job applicants must defeat in hand-to-hand combat to even reach an actual human hiring manager.

These robot gatekeepers are known a Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS.

In a paper on the effects of ATS on unemployment, Sarah Trumble writes, “ATS contributes to inflated hiring costs, longer unemployment durations, and the exclusion of qualified job seekers. Rather than increasing efficiency, ATS often narrows talent pipelines and embeds socioeconomic bias. These failures harm all stakeholders: employers, recruiters, and candidates alike.”

Neat!

Trumble’s research shows that ATS often eliminates qualified jobseekers from consideration by scanning their applications for an extremely narrow list of keywords. That kind of automation simply can’t account for nuance and user error.

But it gets worse! The Stanford Digital Economy Lab has found that most employers are all using the same handful of ATS vendors, which track applicants across multiple job openings. So if a particular ATS decides you aren’t a good fit for a particular job, it might decide you’re not a good fit… for any job.

Because of these unhelpful bots gumming up the works, FRED has shown that the number of unfilled position has risen from 5 million in 2001 to over 10 million. Which like… what? The robots are hurting more than they’re helping??? HOW CAN THAT BE?????????

The workaround

If at all possible, don’t apply to a job through a job listing aggregator like Indeed or Monster. Instead, go directly to the company’s website to apply. In some cases, this gets your around the robot gatekeeper. It’s like the secret hunting trail Xerxes used to get around the Spartans in 300.

Also, that writer I quoted above? Sarah Trumble? She’s the founder of The Job Applicant Perspective, an organization aimed at making the job market more equitable and transparent for jobseekers. They’ve got tons of tools and research to help with your job hunt, so check ’em out.

Lastly, you can try to beat them at their own game by packing your cover letters and resumes with the exact language from the job description. Robot gatekeepers love that shit. We’ve got more tips on how to do this here:

• Ask the Bitches: What the Hell Else Can I Do to Get a Job?
• Our Best Secrets for a Successful, Strategic, and SHORT Job Search 

5. The rise of fake job listings

Yes, fake job listings, or “ghost jobs,” are really a thing. And yes, I too wish grievous bodily harm upon whoever came up with this cockamamy fucking plot.

According to Forbes, about 30% of job postings are for roles that just… don’t exist!

But why on Dolly Parton’s good, green, gleeful earth would this ever be a thing???

Open job listings create the illusion of growth, which inspires faith in shareholders and investors. If a company looks like it’s growing, then it must be about to make more money, right? So a company will post fake job listings, collect applications, and then just… not do anything with those applications.

Somewhat less nefariously, some companies (especially in the tech sector) will do this to collect resumes for future reference. That way if they suddenly need a particular skillset later on, they’ll have a whole database of potential recruits right at their fingertips. Because what’s a little data harvesting between friends potential future employer and potential future employee?

Either way, this practice wastes the time of jobseekers who desperately need work. Time they cannot afford to waste. And I think that’s hella gross! It’s right up there with omitting a salary range from the job description and taking the last of the free samples at Costco.

The workaround

It’s really hard to spot a “ghost job” amid legitimate job listings. Two things you can do are:

1. Run the job listing through a search engine. If it’s been up for months, it’s probably fake.
2. Check reviews of the company on Glassdoor.com. They sometimes identify serial ghost job-posters.

And as always, go directly to the company’s website to apply, rather than through a job listing aggregator like LinkedIn. Finally, if at all possible, follow up with an actual hiring manager.

• I Just Applied for a Job. How (And When) Should I Follow Up?

6. An internal candidate already has the job

In some cases, the advertised job exists… but the company already has a candidate in mind for the position. But they certainly don’t make that common knowledge.

It looks kinda shitty and nepotistic when a company just promotes from within instead of giving a fair shot to external job candidates too. Plus, the corporate governance structures of some companies (particularly nonprofits) require them to accept multiple applications before making a hiring decision.

So even if they know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they’re handing the open job on a silver platter to Cyrus from Operations… they still post the job, accept applications, conduct interviews, and waste the precious time of hopeful jobseekers. None of whom have any clue that they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting hired.

But interviewing multiple candidates gives the illusion of thoroughness. And so the practice continues!

It’s a massive, disrespectful waste of time to jobseekers who are already racing against the clock of their savings running out. Our dear sweet patron Ellen told us about the demoralizing frustration of getting strung along by a potential employer:

“I tried job hunting for about 6 months and got completely demoralized. I got hardly any responses except from one company that made me do 15 interviews for 3 different positions and STILL didn’t hire me. I know I need to try again but I’m so depressed and unmotivated. ☹️”

The workaround

One way to defeat an internal candidate… is to infiltrate the company yourself.

That was a weird way of saying “use your network,” but that’s largely what I mean. Our Patron Tiny says that networking is what led to their new job recently:

“I feel very confident that my advantage was referrals (from people who I’d worked with, not randos on linkedin). At the time it felt like everyone else was using AI to blast out 1000 resumes and recruiters were drowning in slop, so a person saying ‘here is a person’ was a relief. Sorry folks, I know it sucks to hear ‘use your network’ when you don’t have one, I’ve been there.”

Here’s our advice on how to network effectively:

• Dafuq is Networking? And How Do I Do It Remotely? 

7. Return to office

Nothing was good about the COVID-19 pandemic. But one tiny silver lining was that it forced a lot of white collar companies to operate 100% remotely.

For a brief time, this broadened the range of jobs available to jobseekers. If you could work remotely, then suddenly you could apply for jobs farther afield. You had more opportunities! It was a beautiful time of working from home, folding laundry on conference calls, and eliminating metric tons of carbon emissions from our precious atmosphere by reducing rush hour traffic.

But nothing gold can stay, I suppose, because a lot of Business Idiots (seriously, y’all should be following Ed Zitron’s coverage of this phenomenon) realized their jobs had no point if they didn’t have shoulders to loom over in fluorescent-lit offices.

Return to office mandates have since limited the opportunities for remote work.

Suddenly, remote employees who live hundreds of miles from their offices are faced with the choice of moving or quitting. And jobseekers are finding themselves no longer eligible for jobs they could easily do from their living rooms with nothing more than a wifi connection.

The workaround

There are still solid remote jobs out there where the bosses have no plans to make you commute to an office. You just have to know where to look. Here’s our advice on how to find remote jobs and succeed in them:

• How to Find Remote Work: On Getting the Elusive Work-From-Home Job
• How to Successfully Work from Home Without Losing Your Goddamn Mind (Or Your Job)

8. Tariffs

The nonsensical, counterproductive tariffs the Trump administration put into place last year have made just about everything more expensive… including the cost of doing business.

And when business expenses go up, one surefire way to cut costs is to “involuntarily separate” from employees. Which, as we’ve already established, floods the job market with candidates for whom there are too few job opportunities.

In addition, some businesses are just straight-up closing over the fallout from tariffs. Even though some of those tariffs have since ended, the damage has been done. Especially to small business owners.

Imagine pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into opening your own business, toiling over it for years to build it into a successful source of income for your family… only to be driven out of business when the cost of imported lumber or honey or machine parts rises 115% overnight.

Now imagine that to add insult to injury, you find yourself back in the traditional job market, trading your entrepreneurial spirit once again for a traditional 9-5 working for the man.

Fucking heartbreaking.

The workaround

Should we be bad? Should we all just defect to Canada together? I’m in if you are!

In all seriousness… I don’t have a good workaround for the tariffs. We’re all kind of at the mercy of this corrupt, unethical, incompetent administration in ways even your humble Bitches failed to foresee.

But I still believe in the power of entrepreneurship if for no other reason that it has worked for me for the past year. So here’s our advice on how to succeed in self-employment:

• Stop Undervaluing Your Freelance Work, You Darling Fool
• Freelancer, Protect Thyself… With a Fair Contract
• Becoming a Millennial Entrepreneur (in the Midst of a Pandemic) with Katelyn Magnuson 
• 11 Awful Mistakes I Made as a Self-Employed Freelancer, and How YOU Can Avoid Them 

9. Private equity

We’ve already been over this one. And if you haven’t yet read my detailed, self-righteous screed on private equity, then what the hell are you waiting for, you uncultured swine?

To summarize, private equity is not just “the billionaire machine”… it’s a job killer. (It’s also a people killer, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.)

When a private equity firm like Blackstone takes over a company, its first order of business is to reduce expenses as much as possible. And often they do that by eliminating jobs, deliberately understaffing in an attempt to drive the remaining employees to drink save money.

In many cases of private equity takeover, they eventually drive the company into the ground. And then nobody has a job.

The workaround

If you come across a job listing for a company owned by private equity… jobseeker seek elsewhere. Below is some of our advice on spotting the warning signs of a shitty employer.

• Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace
• Season 3, Episode 12: “I’m Done With Evil Bosses and Toxic Workplaces. Can I Stand Up Without Being Hammered Down?”

What’s a jobseeker to do?

We’ve published a lot of jobseeker advice over the years. Some of it was written in better times, for different job markets. Maybe there’s a pearl of wisdom in the links I’ve shared throughout this post that you can use to get you over the finish line in your job search.

But to be perfectly honest, the purpose of this article is not to reveal the One True Path to Getting a Job in These Trying Times. I’m not going to tie this all up with groundbreaking advice on how to make the gatekeeping robots work for you, nor how to get your foot in the door in new and creative ways. I’ve sprinkled this article with kernels of jobseeking advice throughout, but it’s not exactly what you’d call a magic bullet.

Instead, my purpose is to validate you.

Jobseekers often feel profoundly, desperately alone. It can feel like your job applications are but paper airplanes, uselessly launched into an uncaring void.

You watch your friends go to work and use their paychecks to buy their groceries and pay their rent while you toil away in an isolated, lonely job search with nothing to show for it. You receive well-meaning suggestions for tactics you’ve already tried a dozen times, and face politely concerned but baffled loved ones who say without saying “What’s wrong with you?”

It’s not your fault

If you’re still unemployed after a long job search, please know this: it’s not your fault.

There are over 7 million unemployed jobseekers in the United States right now. Many of them are frustrated and panicking. It’s a statistical improbability that 100% of them are just unemployable assholes who aren’t trying hard enough. So that must mean you’re part of an enormous group of people looking for work… and coming up empty handed through no fault of their own.

It’s not because you’re unskilled, unintelligent, or unmotivated. It certainly doesn’t mean you’re not trying hard enough. You are slogging uphill under the weight of a boulder. And that boulder is a system that’s been specifically designed to lock you out and make you feel like shit, all to benefit a framework of capitalist exploitation over labor.

Your frustrations, your hopelessness, your panic and anger and despair are all perfectly valid.

We see you. And we want better for you.

All labor deserves compensation, even ours

This article would not have been possible without our Patreon community. During my research, we started a discussion with them over on Patreon that led to most of the quotes you read above. Since my overarching theme was “you are not alone in wanting to burn down the job market,” it was important that I get the whole gang involved to prove the point. And boy did they deliver!

But they didn’t just contribute to my research—they funded it. And I am unspeakably grateful for their generosity.

Bitches Get Riches is something like 97% donor-funded. The majority of the funding that goes into everything we do here comes from people who believe in our mission: people we’ve helped in some small way, who want to help us right back.

So if you liked this article, and if it injected a little hope or even just some righteous fury into your job search, consider chipping in a little at our PayPal or Patreon. We promise to use your chips for a righteous cause!