-Huge staff rotation (a lot of it people getting fired).
-There being little consequences if a role isn't filled.
Regarding that second point: what happens if there's one cashier, delivery driver or store stocker fewer? Not much, except for delays, unless they're the very last one.
I've been struggling to even get an interview in junior software dev for over a year now. Tried some help desk as well and never heard back. I've had my resume looked at quite a few times now, so I doubt that that's the problem.
If you go to r/jobs and related subreddits, there are plenty of people who are losing their minds after applying to thousands of jobs for the last 2 years without even getting a prescreen. Some are even being rejected by temp agencies. I assume that this is an anomaly and 2023-24 had a uniquely terrible job market.
I'm going to a job fair soon. Wish me luck.
I had a long gap between employers where I lived off of saved money and explored new tech with a hope that I'd be able to improve my standing in the market. It made it nearly impossible to get anyone interested in my application because the gap was years.
Once I'd finally changed that by working a temp gig (having now achieved recent employment), I started getting calls. The job I took required visiting clients on-site from time to time. They didn't think to ask me if I had a car or license. When they found out (as I took a company-paid Uber 25m in my second month), I sensed that they realized they'd left a huge gap in their interview process. I was reassigned to only visit clients that I could get to via a combination of train and ride-share or short ride-share.
Had they asked about long-distance on-sites and my ability to get there myself, I'm confident I wouldn't have been hired.
At every point in time, finding a job wasn’t an issue. It might have not been a great job, but it was a job that paid the bills until a better job came along. Being able to bootstrap to a better job is something the US does really well.