It hasn’t been this hard for Americans to find work since 2021
It hasn’t been this hard for Americans to find work since 2021
Layoffs may not be mounting, but it’s getting harder to find a job in a labor market where hiring is “anemic” as tariff-driven economic uncertainty has put a chill on some employers.
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Job market is brutal, at least for tech. Every job gets 100s of applicants. There's a lot of AI slop. Offered salaries are down. For some reason, management wants people to go into the office (which is among other problems a pay cut compared to WFH).
I've been unemployed since the winter. Had a handful of phone screens. Haven't made it to a technical round yet.
My old job laid off all but one guy and a contractor.
Honestly, I kind of want to get out of tech but I don't know what I can do that doesn't require like a degree or is terrible.
Unemployment runs out soon. Not that the pittance the state gives is enough to live on. I asked what I should do when it runs out and they were like, awkward shrug.
Meanwhile there are billionaires living content lives of luxury.
A company I do work for sometimes recently had an open req, within 48 hours they had received over 400 applications.
Another 300 or so over the next few days following.
It then took a month to wade through them all (even with automated help) and do some preliminary phone screens.
Another couple few weeks to do legitimate interviews with prospects.
Another week to decide.
And then executive leadership claimed the company didn't have the budget anymore and closed the req down.
Insane.
im not surprised, they dont want to waste too much resources on that many applicants. i suspect alot of job listings are like that, to give them an excuse for whatever reason they cant hire people.
What kind of tech do you work in specifically? You might be able to pivot to a different role instead of completely changing careers. I only say this cause I did it a few years ago to gtfo of security. Turns out that made a world of difference for my stress levels. Now feel like I'm doing something instead of asking people constantly to do basic security configs and to patch their shit that hasn't been patched for 5 years.
Mostly backend for web development (django most recently), though I'm moderately proficient at react and JavaScript for frontend. Also testing and QA.
I've been applying to all of full stack, backend web dev, and test/QA. No bites. Learning more languages might help, but I feel like having 0 years experience in (say) Rust won't get a lot of traction.
Maybe it's imposter syndrome but I feel like I've always been a sort of middle of the road engineer. Good at some things , bad at others. It feels like with all the layoffs and AI, there's less room for broadly competent people. There's just going to be the top tier, fighting and getting paid less.