I'm assuming your company isn't hiring because, like so many medium-large corporations, legacy products that require maintenance are driving the vast majority of revenue, and there is no need for new (American - read: expensive) talent to maintain these products. The company can save costs by maintaining these products with a smaller core SW maintenance team and/or doing integration/development overseas.

In many software/services-based orgs, salaries/benefits/pensions etc. can add up to 50-60% of costs. If revenue isn't growing or the company doesn't need "premium" American talent, many (especially large orgs) will set up fake open positions, reject candidates while looking like they are searching, and instead put a hold on hiring, hire H1Bs, or hire overseas.

Just my 2c/observations, may or may not extrapolate out. But gives me a rational framework to explain why unemployment is low (labor market is "tight") and yet employees have little bargaining power and fewer and fewer profits accrue to labor vs. capital.

Edit: Just saw this article about IBM laying off expensive employees on the front page, which fits neatly into this framework - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/ibm-is-be...

I think you're describing out situation pretty well, and as much as I hate it, I see the logic. That said: if we don't keep innovating, some newcomer is going to beat us up and steal our lunch money.

Maybe, maybe not. The pace of innovation is slowing to a crawl in most areas of computing technology. Look at how long IBM/Oracle have been able to derive billions from legacy products. And if you're big enough, you'll acquire whatever the "innovative" new tech is.

There’s academic research that shows a pattern like you describe taking off during the Reagan era of union busting.

Since then, filling important roles (at the grunt level) has taken longer, wages aren’t keeping up.

It’s almost as if it’s stupidly inefficient to have millions of workers negotiating all this on their own.

Open standards in employment make the whole process smoother. Waste less human hours. But also increase worker security, which our system has been trying to undermine to the benefit of corporate masters for decades

(Seriously; Alan Greenspan reported to Congress that growing worker insecurity was good for business during the Clinton admin)

Yeah at my previous job we went from posting a job to hiring in as little as a week.... and 10 years later posting a job meant almost nothing as far as the time line hiring someone.