Still think getting a job in 2026 is as easy as walking in with a résumé and a firm handshake? You might want to read on.
In the United States, at least, the employment outlook is rough. After a horrendous year for employment, US jobs growth stalled out in December as layoffs and hiring freezes in areas like construction and manufacturing take their toll on job growth numbers.
And beneath the official jobs data is a growing accessibility crisis. More and more job seekers are finding themselves shut out of the labor market — not because there are no jobs to be had, but because torrents of AI slop are crowding them out of consideration.
Case in point: a few months back, tech publication The Markup posted an opening for an engineer role. As product director and editor Andrew Losowsky writes, the experience was an instructive look at just how much the job market has broken down.
“Within 12 hours of posting the role, we received more than 400 applications,” Losowsky explained. “At first, most of these candidates seemed to be genuine. However, as the person who had to read them all, I quickly saw some red flags, which were all clear indicators of inauthenticity.”
Those “red flags” included repeating contact information, broken or nonworking links to LinkedIn profiles, repetitive resume formatting, and non-residential mailing addresses.
In a response to prompts on the company’s application form, most followed a “near-identical four-sentence pattern with minor variations.” A number of applications included “ChatGPT says” in their answers, or included information that “almost perfectly matched our job description,” Losowsky writes.
“In the most extreme case, one person claimed they had built our website and Blacklight [web privacy] tool (they hadn’t),” the editor continues.
After just a day of that nonsense, the Markup removed its ad from job platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed. Instead, they opted for internal outreach and word-of-mouth. Though that undoubtedly limited their reach, it slowed the flood of fake applicants “to a trickle.”
The publication has since found their engineer, but not without significant headaches. If you extrapolate this out to the rest of the job market, it’s no wonder job seekers are calling 2025 the year of the “Great Frustration.” Barring any major changes, 2026 could be even worse.
More on jobs: Job Seekers Sue Company Scanning Their Résumés Using AI
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