Oh absolutely, and I think that maybe, just maybe, there should be a legally mandated annotation on such a posting that an internal candidate has been identified and you are competing with them.

In my experience, even worse than a rejection was being offered a salary not commensurate with my experience, and in the neighborhood of $5,000 less than what I was already making in a nearly identical role. I've had that happen on at least three occasions, where the employer was either being dishonest about the salary range or withheld that information until very late in the process; even if for innocuous reasons, it functionally seemed like attempting to put me in a difficult position (stay where you are or leave for us for less and no written/promised path for advancement of position or salary).

Yeah, I'm pretty interested in seeing what effect (if there is even any, not trying to push an opinion here) the bad economy for young people has on salary/compensation negotiations between workers and employers.

Do the employers think that young people are desperate for any kind of job, and then low ball their salary? Or do the candidates settle for a number once it reaches the threshold they think they are worth? Do people negotiate more or less than before the recession on average?

I don't believe that there's even data on these questions, but they would reveal an awful lot about the economic state of affairs if you could get enough good data to establish causation-- which might be very hard.

Just wanted to share I saw a link to a Gallup research piece (by way of ZeroHedge) that touches on some of the issues young people are facing, with respect to the student loan bubble and starting new businesses:

... the country can't look to people coming out of college to reverse this trend because too many of them are strapped by student loan debt. Results of the 2015 Gallup-Purdue Index -- a study of more than 30,000 college graduates in the U.S. -- provide a worrisome picture of the relationship between student loan debt and the likelihood of graduates starting their own businesses.

Among those who graduated between 2006 and 2015, 63% left college with some amount of student loan debt. Of those, 19% say they have delayed starting a business because of their loan debt. That percentage rises to 25% for graduates who left with more than $25,000 in student loan debt. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 16.9 million bachelor's degrees were conferred in the U.S. over the past 10 years -- a time frame that mirrors Gallup-Purdue Index analysis of recent graduates between 2006 and 2015.

I think Gallup could possibly be an avenue to conduct the study / research you mused about. Wonder if they ever will!

ZH: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-15/how-13-trillion-stu...

Gallup: http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/186179/student-loan-de...

It's not just internal candidates. It's done for H1B applications also.