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Joined 6 months ago
Cake day: September 20th, 2025
  • allende2001@lemmygrad.mltoWorld News@lemmygrad.ml•When the System Breaks, the Working Class Pays
    8·
    3 days ago

    https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/i/190017233/a-domestic-reality-check

    […]

    Job openings have been declining since the post-pandemic hiring surge in 2022. In all of 2025, there were just 181,000 net jobs added by the private sector which is a fall from 2.2 million in 2024. But layoff announcements reached 108,000 in January alone. The architecture of the job market is shifting as well, in ways that make it harder for specific groups to find footing. Postings for entry-level jobs are down about 35 percent from January 2023. So, you get people graduating from top schools and doing everything they’re supposed to do. They’re submitting dozens of bespoke applications each week, networking, following up, only never hearing back, or sailing through eight rounds of interviews, say, and then the company just stops responding. The average job opening today receives 242 applications, triple the number in 2017, with most of those never even glanced at by a human being.

    If you’ve been out of work for any length of time, the situation becomes much more dire. In most states, unemployment benefits run out after six months. But even if you’re eligible, they rarely compensate you for more than 40 percent of your lost earnings. Savings dwindle, and people move in with relatives if they’re lucky enough to have ones who can afford them. Part-time employment. Gig employment. You take whatever paying work is available. Former six-figure earners are delivering food because there’s nothing else.

    The cost is more than just financial. There’s a mental price exacted as well. You have the need to demonstrate that you’re still trying, still valuable, still worthy of being hired even as the rejections mount, the little social minefields. Every time someone asks how the search is going, you’re faced with a tedious process of having to decide whether to lie, to tell the whole story, or merely to assent, the slow attrition of your sense of self-worth as you find yourself doing everything right and going nowhere.

    Right now, there are about a million more people looking for work than there are job openings. That’s the reserve army of labor being built. The tightness of the job market is measured by the ratio of jobseekers to job openings, and the leverage is on the employer side, which means lower wages, less bargaining power, more rounds of interviews, more ghosting, and more people falling out of the labor force entirely when they give up.

    This is siege warfare at home.