This is strange to me. Unemployment levels are so low, but there are always tons of people searching for jobs. The average job posting gets from 200-250 applications. Everywhere I go there are "hiring now" signs that stay up for months at a time.

Are the people that apply for these jobs unqualified? It seems weird to me that a sign or job posting would be up for months on end.

I recently filled out an application that wanted to know where I went to elementary school. Yes, you read that right. Another place checked my credit score for reasons unknown to me.

My hypothesis is that companies are spending so much time trying to vet people with worthless metrics that they take forever to hire people.

Also what is the demographic for these 200-250 people applying for each job. Are most of them unemployed or looking for a better job?

I'd say the demographic are the welfare demographic who need to show they're actively looking for work in order to get government money.

If you’ve seen the quality of the resumes if you can even call them that of the 200-250 people applying you would understand. Most applicants are basically throwing hail marrys at opportunities they are not qualified for while either being employed at opportunities they are qualified for or not employed because they refused to take those opportunities.

Despite all these applicants a lot of companies still have to utilize headhunters/recruiting agencies just to get halfway decent applicants.

I have a solid job as a software engineer but will still occasionally apply for other jobs while being employed.

I'd argue since the job market is pretty robust, wage rates are going up and folks are looking around for better gigs and better wages.

I've posted some jobs and received hundreds of applications before. Very few people are unemployed, but lots of these people are just bulk-applying to every job they see. In some cases it makes sense - some people are overseas and looking for any opportunity for H1B sponsorship, some people are either recent graduates or graduating soon so they are fairly desperate. A lot of people are unqualified but I'd say the percentage of people that's completely unqualified was rather low, though we were looking for candidates across multiple levels of seniority including entry-level. This was for a tech job and most resumes indicated a decent amount of programming experience. It wasn't hard to cull ~90% though - it's hard to objectively describe exactly what type of people you want, but it's often not hard to tell that a given candidate doesn't have what you're looking for.

It used to be a pain in the butt to apply for jobs. Computers and the internet changed that.

It’s really just too easy to apply. I must have applied to 100+ places in last 3 or 4 years. Just the formal recruiting on campus interview for 1 year was like 20 firms.

Once you're above a certain level of employability, the job market is not about getting a job, but getting a better job. Since rational actors are generally trying to get the best possible jobs for themselves and roughly speaking almost everyone is less than ideally qualified for the best possible job they can get, so it will always be a struggle. It's the same from the employer's perspective - as long as you can pay, you can always hire someone, it's about being able to get the best possible person at an acceptable cost. So individual struggles aren't particularly strongly correlated with the broader economy - it always feels hard on either side.

lots of people have multiple jobs so the numbers are skewed. Getting a "good" job is hard though cause of what you mentioned. Every job post gets 100s maybe a 1000 responses. People want those job postings with a good wage so hence flood of applications.

i would imagine a good chunk of the "employed" are indep contractors / freelancers so they are prob still looking for a true full time salaried gig.

Also the best way to get a salary bump in today's economy is to leave your job for another one. Regardless if you are working as an admin assistant at some small company or your a senior director in tech.

all kinds of good responses so far

a few things i'd add:

1) you mention signs in store windows, like at marshall's as my example. others in thread are talking about campus recruiting and software jobs. HUGE DIFFERENCE

2) geography probably matters. i've seen a recent WSJ article talking about the center of the country being hollowed out and needing more people (i.e. immigrants)... presumably where all kinds of people move it is tougher to find a job

3) trump and his supporters said unemployment rate was bogus indicator while campaigning and now it's the #1 thing they talk about...... labor participation has fallen alot since 2008 and is very low compared to 2006.. i will note it was falling steadily during obama admin and has stabilized with trump. it might have stabilized in last year of obama but probably depends on statistical significance (i.e. how many months = it stabilized??)

My experience is similar to candybar's. Email is free and so is clicking a few buttons on a web page. People bulk apply to everything under the sun.

I will only use public facing methods as a last resort. It is too much to sift through and I've learned that there are surprisingly many unhinged people out there.

Recruiters are only slightly better. No matter how clear my criteria, it often feels like talking to a wall. Lots of candidates, but very few that are even remotely qualified. And I am not that selective, either. I'm very flexible on qualification and experience and my interviews would be considered easy.

dc_publicus, what percentage of the people who apply would you say are hires?

Businesses aren't used to having a labor market this tight. They need to bring in people that are underskilled and train them up. Its the new reality. The problem is you train people then they bolt, so you have to go out of your way to retain them. I would do so with generous delayed bonuses that you dont get if you leave

this is a fantastic feature of the Trump economy. The workers are gaining wages and benefits faster than inflation.