'So many jobs available, but the requirements are out of control': Reddit tears apart the broken US hiring process

USA: A post on Reddit’s r/antiwork has cut straight to the frustration that millions of job seekers in the United States are quietly living with: a job market that looks abundant on the surface but feels rigged, exhausting, and increasingly dishonest the moment you try to navigate it.

“What is going on with the job market process in the US?” the original poster wrote. “It seems like there are so many jobs available, but the requirements are out of control. If you even hear back from somewhere, the interview process is so drawn out and tedious. It seems like people get fired for the most minor infractions so quickly. Like what happened to giving people a chance and offering even a little bit of grace for growing pains?”

It’s a question that is both practical and philosophical, with responses suggesting that what’s broken goes far deeper than unrealistic job descriptions.

The open secret: Most job postings aren’t real

The first and most damning response came from a commenter who speculated something the original poster hadn’t even mentioned. “You haven’t even touched how most postings are not actual openings,” they wrote. For many, this comment was both obvious and somehow still shocking to see stated plainly.

Another netizen expanded on why this happens. “Seems lots of places like to pretend they’re hiring, but aren’t. They put on a façade they are, just to appease those working, but they won’t. If they can get 10 to do the work of 20, often by threatening to fire people, they will.”

It’s a pattern that reveals something uncomfortable about how labour is being managed in many workplaces right now: job postings as performance, as pressure tool, as a way of keeping existing employees compliant rather than a genuine attempt of hiring intent.

The infinite indefinite interviews

Another commenter shared a possible explanation for why the hiring process has become so drawn out; they pointed out the contradictory pressures that managers are operating under simultaneously.

“Companies are freaking out because they need to simultaneously generate infinite growth for shareholders while cutting as much expenses as possible to survive the incoming financial collapse. Everyone needs skilled workers to do the work but nobody wants to be the last person to create a salary-sized annual expense on the budget. So managers interview, interview, and interview because it justifies their jobs but they never actually hire anyone.”

It’s a bleak but a clear picture: the interview process has become a theatrical show, where the act of hiring has been separated from the outcome of actually bringing someone on board. Managers protect themselves by staying in perpetual evaluation mode, never pulling the trigger, and never having to justify an expensive new headcount to their own superiors.

Employers have all the leverage

Not every commenter saw the situation as purely a symptom of corporate dysfunction. One offered a more structural reading of why requirements have become so inflated.

“There are job openings, but there are a lot of qualified candidates. That means the employers have great leverage in the situation so they can ask for unreasonable requirements because they will likely find a candidate with those qualifications. The only problem I have with that type of thinking is that often times the wrong qualifications are prioritised too high and the more important qualifications are prioritised too low. Sometimes I think people just out-think themselves into stupidity.”

If you think about it, it’s a fair point. The insight points at a real inefficiency in how hiring works when employers have the upper hand. The ability to demand anything doesn’t mean the ability to demand the right things. Companies that optimise for credentials over competence, or for experience over potential, often end up with a workforce that looks good on paper and underperforms in practice.

One commenter’s answer: Unions

Amid the frustration, one commenter offered a counterpoint drawn from their own experience. “This is why I like working with a union. They need people for work, the company needs people to grow. More people, company grows, profit. Not a large company, but pays well and has great benefits.”

It’s a straightforward explanation of what a functioning labour relationship is supposed to look like, where the incentives of employer and worker are aligned rather than in constant tension. Whether or not unionisation is the answer for everyone, the comment reminds us that the dynamic being described in the thread is not an economic law but a deliberate choice.

What this means beyond the US

The US job market’s dysfunction, which is riddled with ghost postings, endless interviews, inflated requirements, and hair-trigger terminations, is not a uniquely American problem. The same patterns are visible to varying degrees across much of the developed world, particularly in knowledge work and professional services.

What the Reddit thread captures is something bigger than one country’s hiring culture; it highlights a fundamental shift in the power dynamics between employers and workers. This is further accelerated and even exacerbated by technological change, economic uncertainty, and a surplus of qualified candidates relative to available positions.

The result is a job market that feels simultaneously full and impossible.

For anyone who has sent dozens of applications into apparent silence, endured four rounds of interviews for a role that was never going to be filled, or been let go over something that once would have warranted a conversation, the thread is less a revelation than a confirmation of something already known. Which may be exactly why it resonated with many.

Read related: I Applied to 500 Jobs and Got 3 Interviews: Why American Job Seekers Feel Defeated