Harris began looking for his first real job before graduating from UC Davis this spring. He had a solid resume, he thought: paid internships in a company that embraces citizens, long-standing volunteers in environmental defense organizations, experience with farms and parks, offices, perfect GPAs, strong recommended characters. He traveled anywhere on the West Coast and lived by car when necessary. He accepts temporary, part-time, or seasonal gigs rather than full-time positions. He builds paperwork and digs to build a dream career protecting California's wildlife and public lands.
He applied for 200 jobs. He was rejected 200 times. In fact, he made clear, he “didn't get it.” It was rejected 200 times. “Many companies never responded.
Millions of workers are now found to be in similar positions. Corporate profits are strong, with unemployment rates of 4.3%, and wages are rising in turn. However, pay has been essentially frozen for the past four months. Employment rates have fallen to the lowest point since the recovery during unemployment following the Great Recession. Four years ago, employers would add four or five workers to the month of the month for every 100 people in the book. Now they're adding three.
At the same time, the process of getting a job became a nightmare of late capitalism. Online recruitment platforms have made it easier to find the opening, but harder to protect. Applicants send out resumes created by thousands of AI, and companies use AI to sift them through them. Bumble and Hinge went to the dating market, modern talent practices went to the job market. People swipe like crazy and have not regained anything.
Every time Harris logs in to LinkedIn, or in fact he'll see a lot of gigs that they think are the right fit. He carefully reads his posts, rubs his resume, adjusts his referral notes, answers company screening questions, hits “submit” and has the best hopes, and hears nothing accordingly.
Other job seekers explained similar experiences. In the suburbs of Virginia, a paralegal named Martin was fired in April by a government contractor. (Like Harris, she didn't want to bleak employment prospects by offering her full name.) She saw many jobs being promoted in nonprofits, law firms, consultants and universities. She sent out numerous applications. She reached the second round several times. However, she was never close to being hired. “I have 10 years of experience,” she told me. “I would be happy if someone told me no at this point.”
For employers, the employment market also functions differently. Companies receive countless inappropriate applications and some good applications for each open position. Instead of ripening your submissions by hand, use a machine. In a recent survey, the HR chief officer told the Boston Consulting Group that they use AI to write job descriptions, evaluate candidates, schedule referral meetings, and evaluate applications. In some cases, companies also use chatbots to interview candidates. Future employment logs in to systems like Zoom and logs in to field questions from the avatar. Their performance is recorded, and the algorithm searches for keywords and evaluates their tone.
In fact, career trends expert Priya Ratod told me that he understands why job seekers feel their resumes are “in the blank.” However, she argued that online platforms make it easier for people to find open positions and that if AI meets the needs of their employers, they can “reach the next stage of the interview.”
Still, many job seekers never end in the human-to-human process. The inability to reach the interview stage spurs workers to submit more applications. (Harris said he would do this. He used ChatGpt almost every day in college and found that the writing was more “professional” than himself.) And the cycle continues: the surge in applications that wrote AI of the same name encourages employers to use robotic filters to manage their flows. Everyone will become Jobsargie's hell.
For months, the economy was in a low fire balance with low employment. Almost every sector of the labor market except healthcare has been frozen. The amount of time workers spent searching for jobs rose to an average of 10 weeks. So Americans are spending two weeks longer in the job market than they did a few years ago. The share of American workers leaving their jobs has dropped to their lowest levels in a decade due to concerns about rising prices and uncertainties about slowing growth.
The balance appears to be falling apart now, and a complete recession appears likely. Black workers have experienced a dramatic surge in unemployment due to massive layoffs of federal employees in the Trump administration. (The 154,000 civil servants who received deferred residence offers for “Fork in the Road” in the White House will receive their final salary this month.) Over 10% of workers under the age of 24 are looking for jobs. “There's an increase in performance-based and strategic layoffs,” Lydia Boussour, consulting firm at Ey-Parthenon, wrote in a note to clients last week. “The cracks are showing more and more.”
What are workers supposed to do? Millions like Martin and Harris and them are still trying to understand that. She continues to apply, but he is a landscaping and volunteering. Rathod recommends traditional networking. Ask recruiters for coffee, go on a face-to-face job hunt, and research leads from friends and former employers.
Such a strategy could work when an employer begins hiring again. But if not, millions of people could remain infiltrated on their resumes.
