Stop Hunting for a Job
The queue is longer than anyone admits. The counter has fewer openings than reported.
Last month — February 2026 — a close friend in the USA started a new job. He had been out of work 14 months, had applied to more than 5000 jobs in those 14 months, working 12 hours a day to prepare pitches, case studies, solutions, crafting frameworks, prototypes, and strategies. He got 9 calls, 4 shortlists, and finally a concrete offer. It was his persistence and single-minded focus that made it happen, with luck also lending a hand.
The other 14 unemployed people I know in America have not yet found jobs. In my India network, there are 36 people who are currently out of work and have been for an average of at least five months. The average is low because of a dozen layoffs in the last two quarters.
But these are people above 40, most actually are above 50.
In the past year I have come across more than 200 freshers — at events, on LinkedIn, in coffee shops, on phone calls since they were referred by colleagues — and none of them have jobs. In the locality I live, there are students who graduated recently, several with AI as a specialisation (not certification, but degrees), and very few have found jobs.
Why is the media not writing about this? Why are corporate platforms not reporting such trends? Because truth is not the purpose of platforms or media. Aspiration and keeping people hooked is the goal.
The numbers, when you go to the source, tell a different story from the headlines.
In India, salaried employment — the kind with a contract, a salary slip, a provident fund — accounts for just 24.9% of all workers as of the last quarter of 2025, down from 25.5% at the start of the year. It fell every quarter. The total workforce grew. The salaried share shrank. There are more people in the queue and fewer seats at the counter. (Source: PLFS Quarterly Bulletin, October–December 2025, Statement 3, NSO/MoSPI, released February 10, 2026. https://www.mospi.gov.in/uploads/publications_reports/publications_reports1770719506668_061eb34b-ec61-4890-9e61-73cc717b4d0b_Quarterly_Bulletin_PLFS_OCT-DEC_2025.pdf)
In the US the story is the same in a different language. In February 2026, nonfarm payroll employment fell by 92,000. The month before, it gained 126,000. The average unemployed American spent 25.7 weeks looking for work in February — the longest duration since December 2021. Nearly six and a half months. For a job that may not exist in the form they are looking for. My friend waited 14 months. (Source: The Employment Situation — February 2026, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, released March 6, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm)
And then there is the number that quietly appeared in the fine print of the same report. The preliminary benchmark revision for March 2025 payroll employment was minus 911,000. Nearly a million jobs that official statistics said existed — did not. The queue was longer than anyone admitted. The counter had fewer openings than reported. (Source: Current Employment Statistics, BLS. https://www.bls.gov/ces/)
The 18-year-old who just finished college and the 45-year-old who just got a pink slip are standing at the same counter. The 18-year-old doesn't know yet that it's closing. The 45-year-old suspects it but hasn't said it out loud.
My friend found his job. It took 14 months, 5,000 applications, and the kind of persistence most people cannot sustain. He is one of fifteen. The other fourteen are still at the counter.
The problem is not that they are failing. The problem is that they are solving the wrong problem.
Jobs are disappearing. Only if we assess the problem correctly can we begin to find a solution. In the current age, I should not be looking for a job. I should be looking for work.