I went for a walk and kept my head down to stare at my phone like a lot of people do these days. Google likes to follow my habits. It knows which websites I’ve visited. So the app sends me suggestions on what to read. Well, I found an article from a business journal about someone who’d applied for over twenty-two hundred jobs in the United States. He still hadn’t landed one. Wow. In the teaser, you could call it, it said the person was thinking about giving up the search. How depressing. What a hopeless feeling it brings. The teaser went on to describe the man as having served in the Navy with a handful of tech jobs he’d included on his resume. I scrolled down the page with my thumb to read the article, and as soon as I did, a pop-up appeared with subscription options. So if I wanted to read further, I would have to agree to be swamped by emails every day by this journal. No thanks. I get enough junk as it is. So much for reading it.

But what I read had bothered me for the rest of the night. Over twenty-two hundred jobs. Think about that. If he were to apply for one job a day, the search would’ve gone on for over six years. And maybe that was how long it had taken him so far. I might give up too.

So who’s to blame for a person as qualified as him to be unemployed? He could be overqualified for many jobs. After reading briefly about his experience, it was enough to know about him that he was surely competent. What hope does it give those of us who don’t have his qualifications? I’ve been applying here and there once a week for close to five months, and no one has considered me for an interview. It doesn’t help that I don’t know what I want to do for a regular jobby job. You know. Something I don’t want to do but have to do because it’s sustainable, and the company offers benefits as opposed to something I want to do which has no safety net. I’m walking along a razor, fighting against globalization, artificial intelligence, lack of skills, specialized jobs, recession, staff reductions, increased expectations from companies, and geography. All of this leads to burnout, or how I felt after what I saw in that article. I’m better off ignorant.