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From both personal and professional experience, I disagree with some of the conclusions herein.

Yes, the job market has shifted. Yes there are definitely problems. No, real wages have not made significant gains. All of that is accurate.

But the anecdotal problem he cites of a Master's Degree graduate not finding work is anecdotal. It is also hard to believe - unless...

An individual applying to 100 jobs with well-crafted and individualized resumes only getting a response from 8 employers just does not match with my own experiences or with those I have helped find jobs. UNLESS he was applying for jobs he was not qualified for. I am not saying no one should ever take a shot at a job that is technically above their level in the hopes of expanding themselves. But if most of the jobs you apply for are in that category, you can't realistically claim those as valid applications in your job search.

When I was searching for my current job on, yes, Indeed, 2 1/2 years ago (i.e. height of lockdowns), I applied to approximately 30 jobs across a wide range of fields. I was fully qualified for all of them, and I got responses from about 15. Of those, about 6 were "sorry, it's filled" responses. Of the 9 "tell us more"s, 6 led to online interviews, and 1 led to an in-person interview, for which I was hired. I still had another 2 pending, but I terminated those hiring processes because I had found a job.

The key to my success? Entry level jobs. Almost every job I applied to was a professional job. Dress codes, office environment, degree requirements, etc. But I was applying to entry level positions in those fields. I had no experience, and went in HUMBLED. I admitted my lacks, discussed the strengths I had which could help compensate, and relayed personal experiences which I felt could be similar to the field, even if they weren't paid positions, or even employment. (When discussing a position working with children, I discussed my time as a parent, for example.) But I went in looking to just get into the field. I have YEARS of leadership and supervisory experience. But not in that field - so I was not looking for leadership positions.

The other key to my success was diversity. Due to my disabilities, I am limited mostly to office type jobs. I cannot stand for long periods, OR sit for long periods without being able to get up for a moment. So factory and retail industries are out, as are things like driving trucks or similar. But in an office, I am mostly seated but I can get up every hour and a half and walk around for a couple minutes. So I applied to work as administrative support, customer support, front line worker, and human resources across diverse fields of social services, education, manufacturing, tech, and medical.

My degree is in general studies - it is basically a degree in "I took a whole lot of college classes without much of a focus." My degree qualifies me to do nothing, aside from "must have a degree" jobs. I am now a children's social worker. Almost all of my peers have social work, sociology, child development, and/or psychology degrees. Something related to the field. But the requirement was *a* degree so I applied.

People only applying to *their* field are limiting themselves. People only applying to higher level jobs because entry level is "beneath" them - ESPECIALLY when straight out of college or entering a new field - are limiting themselves. People who apply with ego are limiting themselves.

But folks who cast a wide net, are open to entry level positions, and take a healthy dose of humility find work. Almost every time. Even white males. Even middle aged white, cis, straight males (like me) who can't check a single DEI box.

And this is not just me. In the last 3 years I have helped dozens of folks across a broad range of education, employment history, age, and career fields find meaningful employment.

Is it harder out there than it used to be? Sure. AI resume-scan bots have made things far more difficult to get past the initial application phase. The constant and growing demand for experience in entry level positions is problematic. And these problems are only getting worse.

But will filling out 100 tailored, well-crafted resumes to jobs you are fully qualified for result in 0 job offers? Not likely. (But please bear in mind that a well-crafted, tailored resume should take no less than 2 hours to produce. Because tailored means you have spent time researching both the company and the specific position. You know what it is the company does, why they do it, what the position does, how they do it, and what the company is looking for both culturally and within that specific role. If it took you 15 minutes to apply for the job, don't be surprised you don't get it.)

Going into the weekend, we were again bombarded by crude propaganda from the Biden administration. The topic was the jobs report, which claimed another half-million jobs had been created. Plus, they cite the unemployment rate, which is 3.5 percent, shockingly low but it means absolutely nothing. It only counts the number of people in the job market who can find a job but excludes everyone else. That statistic is so useless at this point, it might as well not be collected at all.
Labor force participation is still substantially lower now than it was before lockdowns, and fully 6.7 percent below a high reached in 2000. There is much broken in this market but nothing more so than the shell game going on right now in tallying full-time vs. part-time and multiple job holders. Here is where the decay is truly evident, and it is a problem that profoundly affects people’s lives.
A few economists on Twitter spotted a problem, so I had another look. Sure enough, buried deep in the data, we find something incredibly interesting and downright frightening. It turns out that between June and July, the United States lost half a million full-time jobs. That’s the largest loss in this category since the lockdowns.