The Atlantic called the today's job market ‘hell’

In a column for the American magazine The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey describes today’s job market as a “late-capitalism nightmare”, in which young professionals and employers are trapped in a closed loop. Jobseekers use ChatGPT to write their CVs, while HR departments read and screen them using artificial intelligence as well.

Lowrey opens with the story of Harris, a graduate of the University of California, who began actively looking for work even before finishing his studies. He had a strong CV, internships and references. He was applying not only for full-time roles, but also for part-time and seasonal work. “He was willing to do anything — paperwork, digging trenches — to build his dream career protecting California’s wildlife and public lands,” Lowrey writes.

Harris submitted around 200 applications but was unable to find a job. A few companies sent formal rejections, while most never replied at all.

According to Lowrey, this situation is typical for millions of Americans. Despite unemployment standing at 4.3% and wages continuing to rise, the hiring market has effectively stalled: recruitment rates have fallen to their lowest level since the recovery from the Great Recession. Four years ago, employers were adding four to five workers per 100 employees each month; now that figure has dropped to just three.

Lowrey compares modern job hunting to online dating: “What Bumble and Hinge did to dating, modern HR has done to the labour market. People swipe endlessly and get nothing back.”

Online platforms have made vacancies easier to access, but landing a job has become harder. Applicants send out AI-generated CVs en masse, while companies rely on algorithms to filter them. In some cases, interviews are conducted by chatbots. Candidates log into Zoom-like systems and answer questions posed by an avatar. Their responses are recorded, and algorithms analyse keywords and assess the tone of their speech.

Priya Rathod, a career trends expert at Indeed, tells Lowrey that CVs can indeed “disappear into the void”, but believes AI can also help suitable candidates move more quickly to the next stage. Even so, many applicants never make it to a real conversation with an employer.

The impossibility of getting to the interview stage spurs jobless workers to submit more applications, which pushes them to rely on ChatGPT to build their résumés and respond to screening prompts. (Harris told me he does this; he used ChatGPT pretty much every day in college, and finds its writing to be more “professional” than his own.) And so the cycle continues: The surge in same-same AI-authored applications prompts employers to use robot filters to manage the flow. Everyone ends up in Tinderized job-search hell.

Annie Lowrey, the author of The Atlantic

The average length of a job search in the United States has risen to 10 weeks — two weeks longer than it was a few years ago. Unemployment among young Americans under the age of 24 now exceeds 10%.

Experts advise returning to more traditional job-hunting methods, such as attending in-person recruitment events and asking friends or former employers about vacancies. “These strategies may work if employers start hiring again,” Lowrey concludes. “But if they don’t, millions of people could find themselves sending their CVs into the void.”