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by giantg2 299 days ago
"This is horrible advice and exactly why the job market is so broken."

You have this backwards. The only reason they have so many applicants in the first place is that the sector unemployment rate is so high and companies play games with evergreen postings.
1 comments
ghaff 299 days ago
>sector unemployment rate is so high

Except it's not. A lot of people just got used to quit job on Monday, have several offers by Friday (with a big salary boost) which was never the norm for professional employment.

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giantg2 299 days ago
Go check the stats. Sector unemployment is about 6%. Full employment rate is considered 4%. There are numerous layoffs over the past two years. It's taking people a year or more and hundreds of applications to find new jobs. The IT job market has actually shrunk this year.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/it_job_market_july/

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ghaff 299 days ago
That's still not "so high."
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giantg2 298 days ago
Again, check the stats. 6% is higher than full employment rate, higher than the overall rate, and is above the median unemployment rate for the past 100 years. It would be even higher except the participation rate is falling.
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dragonwriter 298 days ago
> It would be even higher except the participation rate is falling.

Prime age (25-54) labor force participation rate is steady and high (steady around the highest peak since the one at the height of the late-90s dotcom boom—which itself was the global maximum since the stat was tracked—for the last couple years.) Overall LFPR (16+) is dropping, but that's just the elderly population share growing.

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ghaff 298 days ago
A lot of people are looking for reasons why landing tech jobs isn't the turkey shoot that it was for the past 15 years or so. I'm unconvinced how much AI is the answer. I do think a lot of tech companies probably overhired during COVID for a variety of reasons. From what I see, professional hiring seems pretty normal even if certainly not overheated and you can argue about how it compares to the general economy by a percentage point or two.
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giantg2 297 days ago
Prime age labor force participation rate has fallen the past couple months and is below it's expected cyclical level.
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