Why Getting A Job Feels Impossible Right Now 

Graduating college only to realize that no one wants me is the most degrading feeling.

Here’s a dirty secret. Companies often post fake jobs that they never intend to fill. This makes it look like the company is hiring a lot and that positively impacts stock price.

Finding a job is harder than doing that job.

And stop telling us older folks to just accept any job. $15 an hour doesn't cover anything now

Falsely advertising employment should be a Punishable Felony fraud💀 !

90% of resumes never even make it to human eyeballs.

If you don't know someone, you're screwed...

Is anyone else just generally depressed at life in 2024? It feels as if we are close to a collective mental collapse.

I think the main issue is finding a job that can actually cover the rent and groceries. It feels like salaries haven't kept up with inflation at all.

Don’t quit your job if you haven’t already accepted a new one. It’s insane out here right now.

i applied for 117 job and got 0 call back....

Sorry, we're moving onto other candidates at this time. We're looking for someone around 21-26 years of age with 35 years experience with an academic doctorate willing to accept a 26K salary. Thank you for your interest in our company.

I personally think a lot of the problem for people is employers unwilling to train. They expect you to already know everything about the job. Especially for “Entry level” positions that require years of experience

Parents: “There are plenty of entry level jobs out there!” Entry Level Job: - Master’s Degree in Pediatric Neuroscience - 3 Years Experience Preferred - Must Complete 3 month training without pay - Must be fluent in 5 Languages - Must be able to lift 2 tons - Need to have a certification of having triple backflipped off the Eiffel Tower while blindfolded in 250 B.C. - Must be able to maintain positive and professional attitude

Lost my job in April 2023 and still cannot find anything. All the while the news is screaming how amazing the job market is. They’re just gas lighting everyone.

Looking for ways to earn money daily is sometimes frustrating and is a pain in the ass, I couldn’t really keep it up, it’s exhausting 😔 job hunting is something that drains your physical and mental wellbeing, hoping to get response from people who got themselves employees already but still keeping your hopes high

I’m getting gaslighted by gov saying record amount of jobs available

Not to mention “entry level” jobs require 5+ years of experience 🤦🏻‍♀️

It’s worse for people that really want to get away from their family, and I’m one of them.

My parents do not understand why it is so hard for youth to find jobs. They seriously believe you need to dress in a suit and hand your resume to the manager at every job opportunity there is until one is willing to hire you. That practice died over half a century ago. You need to enter your resume information over the internet and pray to the algorithm gods that your resume is looked at by a human.

When younger generations can’t find employment, it’s no wonder that they won’t have kids either.

"the job market is fairly solid" literally every big company is announcing lay-offs and the response rate from recruiters is minimal to none

I was laid off April 2023..its now Feb 2024 and i still dont have a job. Over 300 applicants, countless interviews and ghost interviews and dozens of "you were a stong candidate but we chose someone else" The only reason why i havent completely lost my mind is because i started my own business that is keeping me busy even with low sales. But i started it because i never wanted to be in this situation again. I need a job because i need to live and small business take time to grow. Im so grateful for family because if i didnt have them id be homeless .

The crazy part is that society expects people to go to college and get a bachelor degree. The moment you started graduating, no one will hire you because you might be over qualified for the position. Nevermind the sleepless nights while cramming for final exams, writing 15-page papers, and doing presentations for 4 years and over just to get a degree only to get rejected in the workforce. The degree only reminds us that we wasted our time and expected to pay back student loans. 😢

I can't stand it when a job calls itself entry level but requires years of experience in multiple highly specialized fields. Why did I even go to college if I can't find a job in my field?

We hired a few college grads to work in our restaurants because they couldn’t find any better jobs 😢 it’s sad.

Hiring is no longer an assessment of skills and temperaments; it's a form of prolonged ritual humiliation.

entry level job requires 5 years experience, a masters degree, an exhaustive online application followed by an online personality test, submission of resume and cover letter, a 3 week wait for a response (if any at all) followed by 4 rounds of interviews followed by 6 months of silence and then a rejection email.

These companies want to pay as little as possible, no on the job training, and want somebody who checks every single box. What an embarrassment.

Graduating for Computer Science 70+ job applications 1 interview 0 offers

Month 6 of searching. And I’m searching for anything. Just need something to help me finish grad school and save up. Nothing. It’s very discouraging but we have to survive somehow. Biggest fear is homelessness.

It really should be illegal to post a job that a company doesn't intend to fill.

No job. No friends. No partner. Life is brutal.

Whyyy is life like this😢 Life should be a temporary struggle, but at least we should all have the chance to support our basic human needs.

While working for a Fortune 500 company we routinely posted "trolling employment ads" that were semi-permanent, but which had no directly associated open positions. According to HR, these served a few functions, including "keeping tabs on potential staff" in case we planned to hire someone or wanted to open a new facility, gathering competitive intelligence from applicants, or allowing promotion of internal candidates via an external "job survey" which satisficed internal evaluation procedures. When I mentioned this practice wasted time for hundreds of people the response was "not our problem, automation minimizes the processing impact to our staff." When I pressed further about the moral implications - my manager made clear in private "Get off it, this is not your problem."

A good comment I saw on LinkedIn is basically this. They want the experience of a 50 year old. The drive and performance of a 30 year old. The pay expectations of a 20 year old.

And yet companies complain because no one wants to work. Smh

I have a PhD in biochemistry and more than a decade of experience. I been laid off for 8 months. What I've had to put up with is absurd.

The labor market is the worst it’s been in my lifetime. I’ve personally felt like I’ve been living through a great depression since 2008

One of my least favorite things when job hunting is having to re-enter all my experience into their system when ITS ALREADY ON MY RESUME. It shouldn't take 45 minutes to apply for a job, especially since you have to apply for so many. I hate having an account with every company's website so I can apply, too.

So we’re not gonna talk about how employers are eliminating roles and asking the next person in line to do 2 jobs for the salary of 1? THAT is the biggest change that’s happened so let’s talk about it.

They are flat out lying. Lay offs are at an all time high. Most tech workers are averaging applications in the 1000s most job postings are to make shareholders see perpetual growth this is the exact reason for the lay offs to begin with. Educate yourself. Never be loyal to a company.

The whole process of building and editing your resume and looking for jobs and interviewing is absolutely brutal. So exhausting. Its a job in itself. I hope those of you currently going through it find something decent paying so you can be happy

Employers want employees yet are INSANELY freaking picky. I feel employers are just becoming more and more lazy to train but then they complain that not enough ppl have their ideal experience like tf?!

My daughter has been unemployed for over a year, there are no jobs unless you want to work for minimum wage. Except you can't afford to work for minimum wage with student loans, and $2000 a month apartment rent. Laid off tech workers can't afford to live off of making burritos at Chipotle. Also job requirements are too strict, they want the moon, they are unwilling to train qualified job seekers.

In 2023, I had to send approximately 250 applications in the field of marketing, business management and art direction (had a different resume for each) to get 2 serious job offers. I'm now managing a startup's marketing department. It took 4 months between the time I was laid off to the time I started my new position. I used up all my savings to keep up with bills during that time. So for everyone who is going through a job search right now, don't despair, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Just don't give up and use all the tools at your disposal to present yourself in an authentic, professional light to potential employers. Don't give up! You got this.

I've been unemployed for a year and feeling like I'm at rock bottom lately. I've had one interview and am submitting applications left and right. I rarely hear anything back and if I do it's a rejection email. I have 15 years of experience in marketing and account management and I'm starting to apply to low level customer service positions just for an attempt to get in a door. Any door. I've even thought about an unpaid internship I recently saw. I've never felt so defeated in my life.

Personally speaking, employers are looking for people to work, but once you apply they're so damn picky and reject you without telling you why, or just simply ghosting you. Then those same employers go right back to looking for people to work. It's messed, especially for us in the younger generations. I'm tired of it all.

There was a study a few years ago where they found that hiring random people on the spot yielded the same quality as multiple rounds of interviews and intense scrutiny.

If you fail to land a job, it's not because you are unskilled, but rather that you don't have luck or It's a fake job offer. Selling yourself is a skill needed to land a job. Lying is mandatory. When you have the choice between lying, gettin a job and buying food or being honest and living in the street. To live life you need good and evil, vice and virtue. A balance.

Honestly I feel like I’ve been lied to, growing up throughout my school years my parents and our teachers promised us that if you worked hard study hard that you would be rewarded you would get the fruits of your labor. And apparently after graduating high school still haven’t got a job yet, apparently Many people who gone to or are in the workforce or I’ve gone to college or university and I’ve graduated by now or still learning have had difficult time too. The job hunt combined with the cost of Living is hurting so many people. I h

After my most recent interview, I received an email a week later announcing that they weren't going to hire anyone for the position after all. What an enormous waste of everyone's time

They call it "cooling the labor market down." We call it "risk of being evicted because we can't make rent." I get that inflation is an issue that needs to be addressed, but why is it always the working class who has to suffer for the sake of the economy? How about someone with less to lose? It's demoralizing and frustrating.

I got the skills, I got the experience, I got the qualifications listed, yet I can’t even get a phone screen. My resume was weaker 2 years ago yet I would get calls just days after applying. This blows 💀

I love how we need money to survive... to make money we need a job... but we are also responsible for getting a job that we have zero control over whether we even get one or not. If you're lucky enough to even get a job, you will need more luck to keep it. No wonder we are burnt out. Im waiting for the day we all say enough is enough and we just stop looking for jobs and we starting creating our own jobs doing whatever because anything is better than constant rejections that isnt even our fault.

exactly. I’ve applied for so many jobs. I couldn’t even get hired at spirit Halloween and I have a masters degree. I feel judged constantly because people think “no one wants to work” - but it simply isn’t true. Thanks for this.

"compared to your parents, it's a good market" my dad was never asked to do 3 months of free work for a company then get ghosted. He was hired immediately and they bought him a house that was 100% ours. But yeah please tell me how they had it so much worse.

I’ve been struggling to find a job since May of last year. It’s horrible

I think the whole hiring process is absolutely broken. Everything depends on everything else: when you first apply you have to come with almost immediate job experience- but when you don’t have any no one wants to give you a chance to gain said experience because of cost to train you or something else. And if it isn’t that, companies require more qualifications, academically speaking. Then they throw you a curb ball by saying that you’re “over qualified,” which is ridiculous in itself because if you’re over qualified doesn’t that indicate that you are more than equipped to handle the job and do it sufficiently? So what is the problem? I think the problem with the current job market is wrapped around the debate of expectation vs. value. Businesses today require so much more than just education and experience. Some jobs ask for volunteering experience, internships, better resumes (which is a problem as well if one does not know beforehand about formatting and “key words” etc.), and if you pass all that their is still the rounds of interviews that you have to pass- of which if you don’t answer the questions directly a recruiter will just skip over your resume anyway. I don’t doubt their are some lazy people out there that expect to land a job by the tap of their phones, but the issue is much more rooted than that- the working class are tired and frustrated of being de-valued by corporate America. People did not break their backs in college getting degrees and at the same time spent years pounding the pavement to gain experience just to be told yet again that they can’t get a better position due to not having more skills. Truthfully, the whole hiring system is bias. You’re either lacking in skill or experience or influence, or you just rightly get passed up by some manager in a company for their own motive. Sometimes hiring staff just pass on your resume because they fear their own inadequacy at the job and fear of being replaced. It happens; how many businesses have we seen and heard stories from about being passed up on opportunities because of something shady. So there are a lot of factors in getting a job these days. Employers expect so much more from employees, yet they expect us to still survive and thrive in the mediocrity that is financial instability of our day-to-day life. If I can recommend anything to those still in school or college I would say to start doing everything now. Don’t wait till you graduate to start gaining experience in your chosen field (like I did), start doing it now. Start volunteering, do internships, go to job fares, network with people, learn as much as you can and be ready. And for those that are not in school, I would say invest in trade schools. Go for something, a career choice, that’s in demand right now, learn a trade, build up your money and then go back and follow your passion. The system is broken. So we gotta create are own system.

I applied for a job in December 12, 2023. It’s February 3rd, 2024 and I’m still now doing the 4th interview. There’s 5 interviews. Insane.

Can we talk about how “Entry Level” jobs are not really entry level. Seriously who posts an entry level job that requires at least two years experience for something.

The official unemployment numbers are bogus

The new American dream is to leave

Are we not going to address the elephant in the room? These jobs pay pennies. No one wants to work two jobs. In this economy, even with a college degree, employers are offering like $12 an hour part-time work. As a 28 year old man, I can't take care of my bills, my debt, and my lifestyle with that kind of wage. I can't even imagine people who have children or a wife. No one mentioned a job market filled with jobs that pay pennies for part time work when our cost of living is skyrocketing nationwide.

Needs to be a legal requirement that employers state the wage on the application. Absolutely insane for it to be "negotiated" at an interview.

Apparently we are in a ‘skills shortage’ with ‘millions of jobs unfilled’ which ‘necessitates’ the importation of millions of foreigners. The whole thing is a crock.

Apply for a job and getting a interview it's like hit the powerball these days

Sending out 30 resumes and getting 4 callbacks is an insanely good response rate

All things aside, why do job interviews feel like a series of trick questions? “Why should we hire you?” “What would you do if_” “tell us a time where you_”. And most times if you’re completely honest, it’s the wrong answer. If they looked for honest answers maybe they’d end up with valuable employees instead of forcing everyone to parrot the same cliché answers. It’s so exhausting having to be an actor just to work at a place that’s barely paying minimum wage.

The problem is how insane and unprofessional HR departments are

I've been unemployed since May 2023, 9 months ago. I've applied to dozens of jobs, never got a callback or even an email. I've reached out to so many old bosses and co-workers and begged for work, nothing. It's so frustrating. I don't know what to do any more

being told you're overqualified for a simple job because you moved to a new area and need to pay your rent is insane to me... especially when rent is at an ALL TIME HIGH.

Getting ghosted by employers is the most frustrating aspect of job hunting. It like you spend so much time applying and they don't even glance over your resume

2023 was a terrible year for new college graduates, and 2024 seems to be off to a repeat of 2023. Something is horribly wrong.

10 months unemployed... 200 applications sent, 4 Interviews. And its not about me. My CV was fixed with professional and also checked by engineer friend of friend who works on my field. He said lack of white collar exp is only problem, but it should not matter In first jobs. He leads Interviews and said he would call me for Interview for Sure if there were open positions.

I was up for a fast-casual restaurant job and the person waiting to interview for the same job said he did a 4-round interview with Whole Foods and still didn't get the job. Why are places like Whole Foods doing multiple rounds? That's ridiculous. What a waste of this person's time.

When they say jobs are available, they mean the minimum wage ones with no benefits and no required skills...that isn't helping people who need a little thing called rent money, grocery money, and medical coverage.

Im homeless now and I've been looking for a job for the past 4 months, I've gotten 6 interviews and and sent countless resumes not once have an employer calld me back, what im saying is, if a extreme political ideology starts to rise the managers are going to be the first to receive the heat.

Something that's also understated imo is if you're neurodivergent and/or disabled/have mental health struggles, then finding (and keeping) a job becomes an extra level of hard. As someone struggling to find a job and stay organized, one of the biggest struggles is the follow-up part and dealing with being overwhelmed by my email inbox for me (have emails up to 1,000+ that make it hard to organize). It also doesn't help that some programs that are supposed to help (like Department of Rehab) tend to either be hands-off and/or underfunded... 0_0

Cant find a job, hard to find cheap affordable first cars, hard to rent apartments, hard to pay rent

Was laid off in March 2023. Zero offers, hundreds of applications, 4 final rounds, and was ghosted after one of those final rounds. It's now February 2024 and I am absolutely destroyed morally. I've even been turned away from janitor roles because I'm overqualified. I'm so grateful for my current role as a part-time prep cook at a local restaurant. They sure didn't ghost me.

It’s not worth getting a job. They won’t pay you living wage anyway.

Employers want to hire the lowest of the low instead of experienced workers cause they are afraid to lose their spots.

The "be a good citizen, respect the law, work hard, pay the taxes and you will get what you need" social contract is crumbling and its evident. They cannot ask us to play by the rules and starve.

Companies should be fined for posting fake/ghost positions. This is starting to look at lot like Ecuador where thousands of applicants show up for 1 position and if you’re 30+, you’re too old to be considered for it.

I finally secured a full-time job after two months of searching. Hundreds of applications, and I'm not even applying for competitive white collar positions (most of my apps have been for fast food, restaurant, retail, custodial work, etc). The job market is absolutely broken right now.

No joke, my kid is a college student and he had to submit 300 applications to finally secure a 2-month summer intership job. He major is ranked as one of the top 3 in the US colleges.

The crazy thing is that some older people dont know about this problem so they end up yelling at thier son/ daughter saying "Why cant you find a job already it isnt that hard!" It really is that hard sadly for us young adults

No jobs. No kids

The ghosting aspect is what gets me. There is absolutely no good excuse for doing that to anyone. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that acceptance and rejection emails can be automated. I rather get an automated rejection email rather than no response at all.

Companies act like they’re hiring but in reality they want the least amount of people to do the most work and then wonder why they have a turnover rate of 50-80% 🤦‍♀️ then they have the nerve to claim that no one wants to work

It is a stressful process unless you know someone. It's about knowing someone will get you in the door and what you know will keep you in.

I know I’m painting with a broadbrush, but it was really frustrating when everyone was shouting, “nobody wants to work right now”, but all the jobs were purposefully understaffing to maximize profit. I just think the lie is not being kept up as much.

Employers seem to be looking for the perfect candidate, presumably someone who is already employed in the same job somewhere else.

I dont even think some of these places are actually hiring, because I'll submit an application the day a job just posted a "Hiring" ad and they'll say theyre not hiring or it's been filled. Within the same day? Give me a freakin break dude lol

I'm 30, living at home with my parents for the first time since i was 18. I thought I'd get some silly job nearby and save up some money. I can't even get a call back for a dishwashing job. I have a BA and experience in all the fields I've applied for. I've never had this much trouble finding work. Everyone says the only way to get a job now is to know someone who works at the company and get a reference. Millions of Americans are being thrust into poverty and all any one cares about is how much the share holders are making. We need to help people directly, no one should be living in the street in the usa.

Trucker here - You know it’s a problem when a driver with 10+ years of experience and a clean MVR isn’t seeing a lot of offers

I have a masters and have only had a full time job for 6 weeks out of 2023. I still don’t have a full time. I finally got two part time jobs but they’re cutting hours. Not going to lie, there were times where I felt like ending my life because I’m barely hanging on. I never understood why people killed themselves when they lost employment, but being in their shoes, I completely understand.

Job hunting is like searching for a girlfriend on tinder now