Why are so many people struggling to find work? Reddit users offer their answers
A post on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell has asked the question underneath every job hunting frustration thread: not “how do I fix my resume” or “how do I network better,” but why is the job market this bad in the first place?
The original poster listed the candidates: AI, the broader economy, DOGE layoffs under the current administration, corporate greed. They wanted to understand what’s actually causing so many people to struggle, and why positions are receiving hundreds or thousands of applications.
The answers that came back were more nuanced than any single explanation, and more damning for that.
AI is part of it, but it’s being used as cover
The most consistent theme across the thread was that AI is real, but overused as an explanation, and that the layoffs and job cuts predated it significantly.
“AI is part of it, but companies were cutting and consolidating long before AI could reliably do most of the jobs they claim it will replace,” one commenter wrote.
Another offered a concrete example from their own career that illustrated how automation actually plays out in practice, not replacing entire workforces overnight, but quietly absorbing specific tasks that used to require human time. Before becoming a business analyst, they had worked as an allocation planner scheduling pickup appointments. Their team helped develop a scheduling automation that handled initial appointment settings, but the reschedules still needed humans.
“AI/Automation is taking some jobs,” they said, “but it’s more very manual and menial jobs.”
The application volume problem
One commenter identified a factor that doesn’t get enough attention in these discussions: the mechanics of applying for jobs have changed fundamentally, and that change is swamping the system on both ends.
“Applying to a job is the easiest it has ever been in human history. Hiring managers are spammed with hundreds of applications in a very short time because all it takes to submit is one click of a button. Also, it doesn’t help that you are now competing with international applications, many of whom will work for way less money and remotely.”
It’s a compounding problem. The easier it becomes to apply, the more applications flood in, the less time any individual application gets, the more automated the screening becomes, and the harder it gets for qualified candidates to actually be seen. The technology that was supposed to make hiring more efficient has in many ways made it more broken.
“What's happening is what used to be called a recession”
Perhaps the most direct response in the thread came from a commenter who argued that the framing of the question on what specific factor is causing this is itself part of the problem because it obscures a simpler and more uncomfortable answer.
“AI is the excuse. The layoffs were happening long before AI came into the picture in any significant way, nor is it really living up to expectations in most cases. What’s happening right now is what used to be called a recession or depression; however, the econometrics and other things like the stock market are so rigged at this point that officially it doesn’t exist.”
The argument cuts to something that runs through almost every job market thread on Reddit: the gap between official economic indicators and the lived experience of workers trying to navigate the labour market. Unemployment figures that look manageable on paper coexist with a job search experience that feels, to many people, indistinguishable from a recession.
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What the thread tells us
The honest answer to the original poster’s question is that it’s all of the above, layered on top of each other in ways that are difficult to disentangle and that reinforce each other. AI is being deployed, but also being used as justification for cuts that would have happened anyway. The economy is stressed in ways that official metrics don’t fully capture. Applications are easier to submit than ever, which, unfortunately, makes them worth less. And the same corporate consolidation that has been happening for years has accelerated under cover of multiple convenient explanations.
None of these factors is new in isolation. What’s different now is the simultaneous pressure from multiple directions creating a job market that feels, to a growing number of people across industries and experience levels, fundamentally different from anything they’ve navigated before. The job market isn’t broken for one reason. It's broken for several, all at once.