Why Are There So Many Americans That Can’t Find A Job Even Though They Are Desperate To Be Hired?

He gave me permission to share part of that email with you, and it is certainly quite heartbreaking…

Hi Michael,

I am a long-time reader of theeconomiccollapseblog.com, and your recent article comparing the economy to the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” really stood out to me.

I’m really trying to figure out WHY it is so hard to find a job.

I was laid off from my job as a Custodial Foreman in September 2023, and have had ZERO results for my countless hours spent searching for comparable work.

I don’t know if you want to use any of this for an article or not, but if you do, please just keep doing what you normally do: Praising Jesus Christ. Without my faith in him I don’t know what I’d do.

When I wake up, I make coffee and turn on the computer and go through the state’s unemployment job search sites they provided me when I was laid off. I have been looking and also applying for jobs DAILY since September 2023. And these are not “rocket science” positions; I’m simply looking for Maintenance or Custodial or Groundskeeper type jobs. You know, “normal working class” type jobs.

But after ~300 applications (And these are all just to the jobs that I not only have experience for but also would actually want to do), I have had 1 interview. One interview in 7 months of applying and sending tailored cover letters with, daily!

If the economy is doing so “great”, why can’t he find employment?

Some of you may be tempted to think that he is just an isolated case.

Well, here is another example of an experienced worker that has applied for approximately 300 jobs without any success…

Royal Siu, who lives in Seattle and is trained as a pharmacist, likes to make his friends guess how many jobs he’s applied to. They’ll often toss out some number around 40, he told BI. He’ll tell them to keep going. Most give up by the time they reach 100. That’s when Siu drops that he’s applied to about 300 jobs. “It’s usually a shock factor to them,” he said.

Siu, who’s trying to use his pharmacy degree to work in other parts of healthcare, is finding it harder to land interviews than in a prior job search. The 28-year-old was getting more phone screenings and first and second interviews in the past. This time, it’s been a couple of months since he had a screening call. So he continues to turn to his network but also doesn’t stop applying.

What in the world is going on here?

I thought that there were “millions” of good jobs just waiting for someone to step into them.

Something definitely does not add up.

Even Americans with advanced degrees from top schools are increasingly finding themselves out of work.

If you doubt this, just check out these numbers…

Even at some top business schools, the number of recently minted M.B.A.s without jobs has roughly doubled from a couple of years ago, when U.S. companies were rushing to hire as many workers as they could, according to data from the schools.

At Harvard Business School, 20% of job-seeking 2023 M.B.A. graduates didn’t have one three months after graduation, up from 8% in 2021. At Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, 18% didn’t, compared with 9% in 2021. About 13% of those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management didn’t have a job within three months, up from about 5% in 2021.

How are those numbers possible if the unemployment rate is hovering near “historic lows”?

Of course the truth is that we have been sold a lie.

If you do not have a job, you are classified by the U.S. government as either “unemployed” or “not in the labor force”.