Long-term unemployment may no longer be a ‘personal shortcoming’

You cannot blame a gap year, or two, on someone’s resume as a “personal shortcoming” anymore.

According to CNBC, 1.8 million Americans — or one in four unemployed people — have been searching for a job for over six months, perhaps already exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits, which on average replace just less than 40% of a person’s previous income.

While unemployment is often blamed on the person whose name sits on the resume, the numbers suggest that’s no longer the full story.

A 22-year-old international student from India with a master’s in financial management said that, in reality, long-term unemployment is increasingly a “structural issue.”

She noted that new policies from the Trump administration, including the US$100,000 (S$126,931) H1-B visa application fee, would discourage companies from hiring international students like her who need visa sponsorship.

While trying everything to get hired, including sending 30 to 40 tailored job applications every week, she rarely hears back from companies.

A journalist, who landed a gig right after graduating in 2023 by contacting a news director on LinkedIn and going through just two phone interviews, ended her contract in June last year. For the past seven months, she has been using an Excel spreadsheet to track her over 150 job applications — yet even when she landed a final interview, she got ghosted.

Another jobseeker said she’s questioning whether she needs to lower her salary expectations just to get hired.

Meanwhile, a 47-year-old who earned from freelance projects and gig work, including deliveries for DoorDash, said she moved in with friends to save money after her contract role with a bank ended.

Even experienced workers in their 50s who have been laid off are struggling to get interviews, saying “the market has changed or there’s just less hiring.”

According to ZipRecruiter labour economist Nicole Bachaud, both are likely.

She said businesses have not been adding jobs and are slowly trimming their workforce after pandemic over-hiring, economic factors like high interest rates and inflation, new tariff policies, and investments in AI. 

While interviewed job seekers shared the same sentiment, saying they want to “get back into the game” and “do the work,” they don’t have much choice as they’re not getting hired.

One said, “I wish people knew this is not a choice.”

As of December 2025, BLS data analysed by Indeed also revealed that roughly a million more people were looking for work than there were available jobs. /TISG

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