They Cannot Find Anyone. You Cannot Get a Callback. Y'all Are in the Same Room.

I had coffee with a friend last week who has sent out ninety-one applications since May. Ninety-one. She has a spreadsheet, color coded, because she is that kind of person. Three phone screens, one final round, zero offers. And that same week she watched a business owner on the news say the thing every single one of you has heard by now, which is that he simply cannot find anyone who wants to work. She looked at me over her coffee and said, with a calm I found genuinely impressive, "I am right here."

She is right here. And so are two-thirds of US employers who told researchers they plan to increase permanent hiring this half of the year, which is the highest share in at least a year, while 63 percent of them report projects sitting delayed because they cannot find the people they need. Meanwhile the July jobs report showed employers shed 23,000 jobs and revisions pulled another 103,000 out of the two months before it. So the market is shrinking and the market is starving, at the same time, in the same country, possibly in the same building. Both things are true. And the reason they are both true is the single most useful thing you can understand about your own job search, because it changes what you do on Monday morning.

Here is what is actually happening in that room, and why "I have twelve years of experience" is not the answer to it.

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