[weweweoo]

That's true. The US economy is still very strong by world standards.

In my country (Finland) even entry-level jobs that pay peanuts often have multi-round interviews, with applicants recording videos and taking psychological tests. It's all handled by recruiting firms, which make good money by filtering the masses of desperate applicants through meaningless tasks like this.

Even if the workforce is small, job market can still be highly competitive when the there are simply too few successful employers.

[mensetmanusman]

That might be because the risk of hiring is higher in Finland.