> land a job within a year of actively seeking
A year lead time is what a negative rate looks like?
I'd say 1 year is a high upper bound though. Specifics really depend.
But here's some general stats: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-biggest-predictor-o...
That link says that with a bachelor's degree or more, 17% are unemployed for 6 months or less, and 19% for a year or more. That gives a really big percent for people between 6 months and a year.
The reason I brought up the 1 year number was more to point out that there's a big difference between "I can't get a job [at all]" and "I can't get a job I really love as quickly as I want".
I mean, it doesn't matter what the unemployment rate for software engineers is, if you want a job as an AI expert at Google and all you've ever done is building simple Wordpress sites for your buddies.
I could apply to hundreds of corporate jobs and I'm pretty sure I'd get none of them. Whereas for small startups I have historically rejected more offers than I've taken.
In fact, I have never gotten an offer from any company bigger than 30 or so employees. And yet my inbox gets at least 1 recruiter spam per week.
But that's besides the point. If there are very many engineers out there who aren't getting jobs within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. And if there are very many companies out there that can't hire engineers within, say, 1 year of actively starting to look. Then there's something wrong with market fluidity in one way or another.
That said, I don't think I've ever heard of a competent engineer who can't land a job within a year of actively seeking.
Then again, I've heard that if you aren't doing anything useful for over a year, your prospects start to dwindle because people wonder what's your deal and see it as a red flag.