发表于 2025年9月16日
Harris started looking for his first real job months before his graduation from UC Davis this spring. He had a solid résumé, he thought: a paid internship at a civic-consulting firm, years of volunteering at environmental-defense organizations, experience working on farms and in parks as well as in offices, a close-to-perfect GPA, strong letters of recommendation. He would move anywhere on the West Coast, living out of his car if he had to. He would accept a temporary, part-time, or seasonal gig, not just a full-time position. He would do anything—filing paperwork, digging trenches—to build his dream career protecting California’s wildlife and public lands.
He applied to 200 jobs. He got rejected 200 times. Actually, he clarified, he “didn’t get _rejected_ 200 times.” A lot of businesses never responded.
Right now, millions of would-be workers find themselves in a similar position. Corporate profits are strong, the jobless rate is 4.3 percent, and wages are climbing in turn. But payrolls have been essentially frozen for the past four months. The hiring rate has declined to its lowest point since the jobless recovery following the Great Recession. Four years ago, employers were adding four or five workers for every 100 they had on the books, month in and month out. Now they are adding three.
At the same time, the process of getting a job has become a late-capitalist nightmare. Online hiring platforms have made it easier to find an opening but harder to secure one: Applicants send out thousands of AI-crafted résumés, and businesses use AI to sift through them. What Bumble and Hinge did to the dating market, contemporary human-resources practices have done to the job market. People are swiping like crazy and getting nothing back.
Every time Harris logged in to LinkedIn or Indeed, he would see scores of gigs that seemed like they might be a good fit. He would read a posting carefully, scrub his résumé, tailor an introductory note, answer the company’s screening questions, hit “Send,” hope for the best, and hear nothing in response—again and again and again.
Other job seekers described similar experiences. In suburban Virginia, a paralegal named Martine got laid off by a government contractor in April. (Like Harris, she did not want to dim her employment prospects by providing her full name.) She saw plenty of jobs being advertised at nonprofits, law firms, consultancies, and universities. She sent out dozens of applications. She even got to the second round a few times. But she never came close to being hired. “I have 10 years of experience,” she told me. “I would be happy if a person told me no at this point.”
For employers, the job market is working differently too. Businesses receive countless ill-fitting applications, along with a few good ones, for each open position. Rather than poring over the submissions by hand, they use machines. In a recent survey, chief HR officers told the Boston Consulting Group that they are using AI to write job descriptions, assess candidates, schedule introductory meetings, and evaluate applications. In some cases, firms are using chatbots to interview candidates, too. Prospective hires log in to a Zoom-like system and field questions from an avatar. Their performance is taped, and an algorithm searches for keywords and evaluates their tone.
Priya Rathod, a career-trends expert at Indeed, told me she understands why job seekers feel as if their résumés are “going into a void.” But she argued that the online platforms make it easier for people to find open positions and that AI can “get them to the next stage of the interview quicker,” if their applications fit an employer’s needs.
Still, a lot of job applicants never end up in a human-to-human process. The impossibility of getting to the interview stage spurs jobless workers to submit more applications, which pushes them to rely on ChatGPT to build their résumés and respond to screening prompts. (Harris told me he does this; he used ChatGPT pretty much every day in college, and finds its writing to be more “professional” than his own.) And so the cycle continues: The surge in same-same AI-authored applications prompts employers to use robot filters to manage the flow. Everyone ends up in Tinderized job-search hell.
For months, the economy has been in a low-hire, low-fire equilibrium; virtually every sector of the labor market except for health care has been frozen. The amount of time a worker has spent looking for a job has climbed to an average of 10 weeks, meaning that Americans are spending two weeks longer on the job market than they were a few years ago. The share of American workers quitting a job has fallen to its lowest level in a decade, because of concerns about rising prices and jitters about slowing growth.
The equilibrium now seems to be falling apart, and a full-on recession looks likely. Black workers have experienced a dramatic surge in joblessness, in part because of the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees. (The 154,000 civil servants who took the White House’s “Fork in the Road” deferred-resignation offer will receive their last paycheck this month.) More than 10 percent of workers under the age of 24 are searching for a job. “Performance-based and strategic layoffs are increasing,” Lydia Boussour of the consultancy EY-Parthenon wrote in a note to clients last week. “Cracks are increasingly showing.”
What is a worker supposed to do? Martine and Harris and millions like them are still trying to figure that out; she keeps on applying, whereas he is doing landscaping and volunteering. Rathod said that she recommends old-fashioned networking: asking recruiters out for coffee, going to in-person job events, and surveying friends and former employers for leads.
Such strategies might work if employers begin hiring again. But if not, millions more people might be left pitching their CVs into the void.
Harris started looking for his first real job months before his graduation from UC Davis this spring. He had a solid résumé, he thought: a paid internship at a civic-consulting firm, years of volunteering at environmental-defense organizations, experience working on farms and in parks as well as in offices, a close-to-perfect GPA, strong letters of recommendation. He would move anywhere on the West Coast, living out of his car if he had to. He would accept a temporary, part-time, or seasonal gig, not just a full-time position. He would do anything—filing paperwork, digging trenches—to build his dream career protecting California’s wildlife and public lands.
今年春天毕业于 UC Davis（加州大学戴维斯分校）之前的几个月，Harris 就开始寻找他的第一份真正的工作。在他看来，自己的简历很扎实：在一家公共事务咨询公司带薪实习，多年在环保组织做志愿者，既有在农场和公园的工作经历，也有办公室经验，GPA 接近满分，还有有力的推荐信。他愿意搬到西海岸的任何地方，必要时甚至住在车里。他不只接受全职岗位，也愿意干临时、兼职或季节性的活。他为了实现保护加州野生动物与公共土地的理想职业，什么都愿意做——从整理文书到挖沟渠。
He applied to 200 jobs. He got rejected 200 times. Actually, he clarified, he “didn’t get _rejected_ 200 times.” A lot of businesses never responded.
他申请了200个岗位。他被拒了200次。其实，他补充说，他“并不是被‘拒绝’了200次”。很多公司根本没有任何回复。
Right now, millions of would-be workers find themselves in a similar position. Corporate profits are strong, the jobless rate is 4.3 percent, and wages are climbing in turn. But payrolls have been essentially frozen for the past four months. The hiring rate has declined to its lowest point since the jobless recovery following the Great Recession. Four years ago, employers were adding four or five workers for every 100 they had on the books, month in and month out. Now they are adding three.
眼下，数以百万计的有意求职者都处在相似的境地。企业利润强劲，失业率为4.3%，工资也在随之上涨。但在过去四个月里，就业人数基本处于“冻结”状态。招聘率已降至自“大衰退”后那段“无就业复苏”时期以来的最低点（“大衰退”指2008年前后全球金融危机引发的经济下行）。四年前，用人单位平均每个月都会在现有每100名在册员工的基础上新增4到5人；如今只新增3人。
At the same time, the process of getting a job has become a late-capitalist nightmare. Online hiring platforms have made it easier to find an opening but harder to secure one: Applicants send out thousands of AI-crafted résumés, and businesses use AI to sift through them. What Bumble and Hinge did to the dating market, contemporary human-resources practices have done to the job market. People are swiping like crazy and getting nothing back.
与此同时，找工作的过程已然变成一场“晚期资本主义”的噩梦。在线招聘平台让人更容易发现职位空缺，却更难真正获得录用：求职者投出成千上万份由AI撰写或润色的简历，企业则用AI来筛选它们。Bumble和Hinge（两款主流约会App）对约会市场造成的影响，如今当代的人力资源做法也同样带到了就业市场。人们像刷交友软件那样疯狂滑动（swipe），却毫无回音。
Every time Harris logged in to LinkedIn or Indeed, he would see scores of gigs that seemed like they might be a good fit. He would read a posting carefully, scrub his résumé, tailor an introductory note, answer the company’s screening questions, hit “Send,” hope for the best, and hear nothing in response—again and again and again.
每次Harris登录LinkedIn或Indeed，他都会看到一大堆看起来挺合适的岗位。他会仔细阅读招聘信息，精心润色简历，量身定制一段开场自我介绍，回答公司的预筛问题，点击“发送”，抱着最好的希望——然后毫无回音，如此反复，一次又一次。
Other job seekers described similar experiences. In suburban Virginia, a paralegal named Martine got laid off by a government contractor in April. (Like Harris, she did not want to dim her employment prospects by providing her full name.) She saw plenty of jobs being advertised at nonprofits, law firms, consultancies, and universities. She sent out dozens of applications. She even got to the second round a few times. But she never came close to being hired. “I have 10 years of experience,” she told me. “I would be happy if a person told me no at this point.”
其他求职者也讲述了类似的经历。在弗吉尼亚州郊区，一位名叫 Martine 的 paralegal（法律助理）在4月被一家政府承包商解雇。（和 Harris 一样，她不愿公布全名，以免影响求职前景。）她看到非营利组织、律师事务所、咨询公司和大学都有大量岗位在招聘。她投出了几十份申请，几次甚至进入了第二轮，但始终离拿到录用还差得很远。“我有10年的从业经验，”她对我说。“到了现在，只要有人明确地拒绝我，我都觉得算是好事了。”
For employers, the job market is working differently too. Businesses receive countless ill-fitting applications, along with a few good ones, for each open position. Rather than poring over the submissions by hand, they use machines. In a recent survey, chief HR officers told the Boston Consulting Group that they are using AI to write job descriptions, assess candidates, schedule introductory meetings, and evaluate applications. In some cases, firms are using chatbots to interview candidates, too. Prospective hires log in to a Zoom-like system and field questions from an avatar. Their performance is taped, and an algorithm searches for keywords and evaluates their tone.
对雇主而言，就业市场的运转方式也变了。每个职位都会收到无数不匹配的申请，夹杂着少量合适的简历。公司不再逐份人工筛选，而是交给机器处理。根据一项最新调查，首席人力官（CHRO）向波士顿咨询公司（Boston Consulting Group）表示，他们正用AI撰写岗位描述、评估候选人、安排初步会谈并审阅申请。有些公司甚至用聊天机器人进行面试：候选人登录一个类似Zoom的视频系统，回答屏幕上虚拟形象（avatar）提出的问题。面试过程会被录制，算法再搜寻关键词并评估他们的语气。
Priya Rathod, a career-trends expert at Indeed, told me she understands why job seekers feel as if their résumés are “going into a void.” But she argued that the online platforms make it easier for people to find open positions and that AI can “get them to the next stage of the interview quicker,” if their applications fit an employer’s needs.
求职平台 Indeed 的职业趋势专家 Priya Rathod 告诉我，她理解求职者为什么会觉得自己的简历像是“投进了黑洞”。但她认为，线上平台让人们更容易找到空缺岗位，而且如果求职材料符合用人单位的需求，AI还能“更快地把他们送到面试的下一阶段”。
Still, a lot of job applicants never end up in a human-to-human process. The impossibility of getting to the interview stage spurs jobless workers to submit more applications, which pushes them to rely on ChatGPT to build their résumés and respond to screening prompts. (Harris told me he does this; he used ChatGPT pretty much every day in college, and finds its writing to be more “professional” than his own.) And so the cycle continues: The surge in same-same AI-authored applications prompts employers to use robot filters to manage the flow. Everyone ends up in Tinderized job-search hell.
尽管如此，很多求职者始终无法进入人与人直接交流的环节。无法迈入面试阶段，迫使失业者投出更多申请，也让他们越来越依赖ChatGPT来撰写简历并回答筛选问题。（Harris告诉我他就是这样做的；他在大学几乎每天用ChatGPT，觉得它的文笔比他自己的更“professional”。）于是循环继续：千篇一律的AI生成申请激增，促使雇主用机器人筛选工具来控制流量。最终，所有人都陷入被“Tinder化”的求职地狱（指类似Tinder的“左右滑”式匹配机制）。
For months, the economy has been in a low-hire, low-fire equilibrium; virtually every sector of the labor market except for health care has been frozen. The amount of time a worker has spent looking for a job has climbed to an average of 10 weeks, meaning that Americans are spending two weeks longer on the job market than they were a few years ago. The share of American workers quitting a job has fallen to its lowest level in a decade, because of concerns about rising prices and jitters about slowing growth.
数月来，经济一直处于“少招、少裁”的均衡状态；除医疗保健行业外，劳动力市场几乎所有部门都处于冻结。求职者找工作的耗时已上升到平均10周，这意味着美国人在劳动力市场停留的时间比几年前长了2周。由于对物价上涨和经济增速放缓的担忧，美国主动辞职的员工占比降至十年来的最低水平。
The equilibrium now seems to be falling apart, and a full-on recession looks likely. Black workers have experienced a dramatic surge in joblessness, in part because of the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees. (The 154,000 civil servants who took the White House’s “Fork in the Road” deferred-resignation offer will receive their last paycheck this month.) More than 10 percent of workers under the age of 24 are searching for a job. “Performance-based and strategic layoffs are increasing,” Lydia Boussour of the consultancy EY-Parthenon wrote in a note to clients last week. “Cracks are increasingly showing.”
当前的均衡状态似乎正在土崩瓦解，全面经济衰退看起来很有可能。黑人劳动者的失业激增，部分原因在于特朗普政府对联邦公务员实施了大规模裁员。（有154,000名联邦公务员接受了白宫“Fork in the Road”（“岔路口”）延期辞职方案——即先同意在未来某一时间离职、在此之前继续发薪——他们将在本月领取最后一笔工资。）24岁以下的劳动者中，超过10%正在寻找工作。咨询公司EY-Parthenon的Lydia Boussour上周在致客户的备忘中写道：“基于业绩和出于战略考虑的裁员正在增加。”“裂痕正愈发明显。”
What is a worker supposed to do? Martine and Harris and millions like them are still trying to figure that out; she keeps on applying, whereas he is doing landscaping and volunteering. Rathod said that she recommends old-fashioned networking: asking recruiters out for coffee, going to in-person job events, and surveying friends and former employers for leads.
求职者该怎么办？Martine、Harris以及和他们一样的数百万人仍在摸索：她继续不断投递申请；他则在做园林绿化的活儿并参与志愿服务。Rathod表示，她建议采用“老派”的人脉拓展：约招聘人员出来喝咖啡、参加线下求职活动，并向朋友和前雇主打听岗位线索。
Such strategies might work if employers begin hiring again. But if not, millions more people might be left pitching their CVs into the void.
如果雇主重新开始招聘，这些策略也许会奏效。否则，可能会有数以百万计的人只能把自己的简历投向虚空（石沉大海）。