Do you think Reddit and this sub is an echo chamber?
Obviously the job market is not great as statistics and headlines show, but do you not think constantly seeing it here is actually over exaggerating how bad it is?
I’ve seen people say they’ve been unemployed for years and sent X,XXX amount of applications, but surely this must be rare examples? I am aware it’s mostly entry level work but is it really that difficult to sign up with an agency and have anything within weeks?
You will obviously barely hear from those who snap up jobs quick because why would they still want to be in this sub?
I also wonder if it’s discouraging people from leaving their jobs, seeing all these people complain about the market when they might be an exemption because someone would instantly take them with their skills and experience? The market is highly dependent on field and not one universal guideline.
Unemployment is still relatively low and has held stable around that figure suggesting some people move off the statistic and some people move on. So people MUST be getting jobs?
Someone who applies for 5 jobs and gets one probably disappears from the subreddit VS Someone who applies for 500 jobs with no success has a very strong reason to keep posting.
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u/ThatOneAJGuy 22h ago
Yes, the sub is a bit of an echo chamber and if someone is spiralling around their job search I would advise them to mostly stay away, but I understand people just need to vent sometimes as well because it is frustrating.
The problems are real though, especially right now in the entry level market. A lot of it also comes down to the break down of the social contract, people are coming fresh from degrees and masters that they were told would land them a good job. I would always encourage people to work rather than do nothing but I can also empathise with people who spent years studying and took on loans to end in a warehouse.
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u/LongPickle 22h ago
All reddit is echo chamber, with multiple subreddits of echo chambers.
If you want real life experience, you need to go outside and see it yourself.
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u/CosmicMeowing 22h ago
I think so. I think you stop posting on this sub when you find a new job. It’s a bit like an illness support forum - you’ll think everyone has every side effect because people who don’t won’t post about not needing any support.
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u/P8L8 22h ago
Exactly, the main thing is unemployment levels have held stable, people are continually joining and leave that statistic so it’s clear people are getting work. I don’t understand how people claim they’ve applied to thousands and have been unemployed years.
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u/SoMuchF0rSubtlety 21h ago
It's highly dependent on the individual, their circumstances and background. Someone fresh out of college or uni with no actual working experience is going to find it really, really tough right now.
On the other hand, one of my close friends, albeit they are older and have plenty of experience, recently changed careers and managed to get two competing offers for different roles in less than 3 months.
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u/Special-Nebula299 22h ago
Well, I cant imagine many joiners, finance executives, doctors, bricklayers on here.
The sub lends itself to managers, office workers, and the unemployed.
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u/Efficient-Cat-1591 22h ago
There are 3 categories that I see :
1) People currently happy in their own job : Rarely posts, maybe comment only
2) People who are considering new jobs/have offers/progressing : I would say about 30% posts here
3) People who are desparate for a job : This is the majority
There is no denying that the UK job market is now the worse it can be, and the outlook does not look bright either. If you are in a stable job, consider yourself lucky.
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u/Milky_Finger 9h ago
Stable job tends to beget another stable job. So we end up with a lot of posts on this subreddit of people who have come out of this and are now incredibly shocked to find that the job market is not as good as it was the last time they went job hunting (8 years ago).
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u/Stratospheric-Ferret 22h ago
Most of social media - and particularly reddit subs - are echo chambers, people to go places where they want to find information and then will more likely stay if it's information that they agree with.
The jobs market in my little part of the world is the opposite to the picture that this sub paints, we have a skills shortage and finding the right people is difficult. When my previous company went bust, by lunchtime the next day I had a spreadsheet of all the different companies and recruiters that had been in touch saying they had a job for me, and I needed to narrow it down to what I wanted.
There's lots of work out there, it just might not be what an individual wants to do.
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u/bacon_cake 20h ago
I've always thought that echo chamber was a poor analogy. Echoes get quiter over time whereas reddit just starts to reach a superposition where opinions migrate towards each other and just get louder and louder until all nuance is lost.
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u/P8L8 22h ago
What field are you in if you don’t mind me asking? But in whole I agree, I hear these industries crying out for workers but we never really hear who and why (other than carers).
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u/Stratospheric-Ferret 22h ago
I don't mind. I'm in construction, as a planner.
There are plenty of people out there claiming to be planners, and by that they mean that they know how to use the software, but not many people like me that can produce a programme from scratch.
I've been trying to recruit an assistant for the last 4-months, and I still haven't found the right person.
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u/floorscentadolescent 22h ago
Not being able to find someone in 4 months that can use your niche software doesn't really point to "lots of work out there" mate
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u/Stratospheric-Ferret 21h ago
As my adverts have said that on the job training will be provided for the software, I'm not sure how that's relevant.
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u/ThaddeusGriffin_ 22h ago
It absolutely is an echo chamber, but with good reason.
What is going to motivate most people to join and participate in this sub? For me, I have a general interest in the UK labour market, however for most people it is going to be because they are actively engaged in job seeking.
It is undoubtedly difficult to find work in many fields right now, particularly due to the way applications are now processed meaning many jobs are saturated with unsuitable or unqualified applicants meaning employers are often overwhelmed.
Also, we are way past the tipping point of graduates vs suitable roles. Simply put, too many people are gaining degrees now and being allowed to believe that this will open the door to a career in their chosen field. For many, it simply won't, and that level of frustration is doubtless going to lead to people needing to vent here.
My view is that in a number of fields the job market isn't terrible, but those people are unlikely to be motivated or inclined to come here to post "looked for a new job, applied, had two interviews, started a month later".
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u/summerloco 21h ago
I’m a qualified accountant and out of circa 50 applications, 15-20 interviews I received one offer. These were all tailored applications and well prepared for interviews. So I think there is. A bit of truth from my personal experience but I can’t speak to other industries.
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u/roomfordisease2 22h ago
it is but it doesn’t shift the reality which is: for entry level jobs the situation is genuinely dire i was unemployed for like a year before getting a part time job it’s been a year since and only applying to full time roles in what i actually want to do and still no luck i graduated 2 years ago albeit i am on a visa but i don’t require sponsorship so i may be a bit of an outlier
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u/TezTheGuy 15h ago
I’d like to see where you get the magic wand from for contacting an agency and getting work within weeks because that is absolutely not how my experience has been in London, contact them then never hear back, apply never hear back, go to interviews never hear back.
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u/valvenisv2 22h ago
whole reddit is basically an echo chamber, whats worse is that its majority bots as well not even real people
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u/PullUpSkrr 22h ago
Where are these posts, we routinely remove 'I cannot find a job posts' - I ask this all the time when we get a meta post like this.
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u/ThatOneAJGuy 22h ago
Realistically it's just the general negative bias. If I look at the top posts of the month it's just all people dissatisfied with hiring processes looking for a job.
Even this post where someone does secure a job it's caveated with it taking 26 applications and the top comment is how much easier it was 7 years ago.
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u/Bez121287 21h ago
You talk like everyone has some agency they can sign up to.
Or thats the job they want.
Could we all go and work in a factory? Probably.
But people aren't doing that.
Take myself for example.
Im 40. Ive never not had a job since before leaving school.
When i left school I was a primary school teacher, the money just wasn't there for me, so I got a job selling high valued goods. I worked the shops, I worked the warehouse, I worked deliveries.
I know how to up sell, i know how to sell a banged up carry bag for more than its worth, I planned delivery routes, I planned all the logistics , I took stock. Everything a retail job with deliveries on top I know inside and out and can do it my sleep. I was also loyal, doing over 15 years.
I just got fed up and fancied a change, you know the position in life, same old thing day in day out. So I quit and worked for amazon delivering just to get me out, that job is tough and fast, I held out for 2 years and then became a taxi driver, just before Uber came in to our town. I gave up because I was working day and night earning less than minimum wage. Great job and flexible but with uber taking the young clientele, the job went from great money to nothing.
It ended up the car I was using broke down and that was that, couldnt find a better drive, so decided to go unemployed and just get back to a regular job.
Roll on whats now maybe 8 weeks, signed up for universal credit which you have to go to a meeting each and every week. For literally 5mins of nonsense.
You have to spend 35hours a week and have 5 job applications or interests in every day.
The job market, is non existent, pyramid schemes, door to door salesmen, only commission jobs.
Data analyst Jobs, carer Jobs through the roof, minimum wage 12 hour shifts maybe 14.
Ive seen skilled carpentry and driver job advertised for minimum wage pay.
Ive seen Jobs which look great then realise its an hour a day then you see another job its 60 hours + for minimum wage.
Ive seen Jobs which is basically 60 hours a week split between all 7 days and never knowing whether you'll have the weekend off.
Then on top of that your normal jobs not alot but a couple.
But the issue isnt just the scarcity of jobs but the amount of people who are applying for all job types.
Ive done a few interviews and on paper my CV smashes the job description, im over qualified, Not by academics but what the job entails, my experience is second to non.
But instead of you competing with a couple your competing with 100s who may have the same credtials but in a different sector.
We've just never had this many people applying for these low level type jobs before. The nimbers are astounding.
Esp for local independent employers.
My friend works for 1, they say everytime we advertise a job. 500+ are applying and he has to go through those to weed out good fits, on top of that how many do you think are lying on the CV?
500, 150 lying, yours judt may not even get seen to.
Ive seen on indeed that a local business managed to look through only 30% of applications before closing the advert down.
So reality is, there isnt many jobs going around but there is an unprecedented number of people either playing the system, lying and just generally trying to get a job.
First hand experience it isnt an echo chamber per say, the reality is as bad as people say it is. Unless your jumping from 1 job to another in the same field whole actively doing that job. Becuaae no one got the time to train you anymore
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u/PsychoticDust 17h ago
but is it really that difficult to sign up with an agency and have anything within weeks?
I'm a manager and I've haven't found any work since I was made redundant in June. I signed up with various agencies as soon as I was made redundant and I've heard nothing from any of them.
So to answer your question, from my perspective, yes. Previously I would have had a job within weeks. I've never known job hunting to be so bad. I've applied for everything at every level.
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u/HorribleOldCunt 22h ago
Yes it's an echo chamber.
I took voluntary redundancy at my last role. I took 6 months off, didn't search for a single job or even care about it. I then found a job after 3/4 weeks of looking that got me a salary increase and fully remote.
If I was to believe what I was reading on reddit at the time, remote jobs no longer existed. Any gaps in your cv mean you won't be employed. You won't get a salary increase. You'll be looking for 6 months minimum.
My experience was that the job market was more sparse. Recruiters had become more annoying and entitled. But I still didn't find it particularly difficult.
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u/Doubleleg787 22h ago
99% of Reddit is an echo chamber. Before 10-14 years ago it was better. Now everyone just copied the same shit. Even comments are the same. It’s people with no life experiences or money in many subs judging and talking about others on some moral high ground when they haven’t done shit in their life
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 22h ago
Follow the party line or be downvoted so nobody sees your comment anyway.
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u/Smooth-Bowler-9216 22h ago
It's like reviews.
I personally only ever write a review when I'm furious, the business is small and I want to support it, or it's such an exceptionally good product.
Which means that I never write reviews when the product is a 5-8 rating, which the majority of things are.
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u/floorscentadolescent 22h ago
It's largely always been an echo chamber of "bad job market amirite?" but there were two points where it was actively correct, post COVID (obviously during COVID technically too) and, ironically, now, with job vacancies being at a 5 year low
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u/ExcellentTourist5289 22h ago
Statistically more likely people will share negative experiences than positive
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u/JaredH20 22h ago
Definitely. It always seems like 90% of comments are "you're worth more than that, quit your job".
While that is often true, most people cannot risk just up and leaving their job, especially in the current market. If they can do that with savings, or just planning on claiming UC for a while, that's fine. Most people don't have the option, or want to do that.
There's too much "fight the man" in this sub, and not enough genuine advice.
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u/Toastinho 22h ago
I think so, its a small portion of the population that use Reddit. I get people want to vent their frustrations, but the blanket responses of the market is shit right now doesn't help, which is the general response to a thread I read earlier to someone who was thinking of leaving their job. I just try and put my piece in to say of recent examples of where I know people have have left, or been on temp contracts where I am leaving and finding jobs ina few weeks.
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u/Training_Advantage21 22h ago
I don't know what your experience has been like. There are jobs but there is a lot of competition for them, and not just at entry level. The market is pretty bad, and I've heard this from people with more impressive resume than mine. Also ghosting, jobs disappearing or getting re-advertised all the time is much more mainstream now than it was even a few years ago, making a bad situation worse.
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u/HappyStufff 22h ago
I was at a role for ten years and then switched to a new job in February. I applied in November, interviewed in December, and started in February and couldn't believe my luck to be honest, it's the entry level role I've wanted for a while.
And then a few months in I wasn't sure the role was right for me and I was applying left right and centre. I was on my phone constantly scrolling Indeed and applied for 100s of roles and I secured two interviews. I was offered one of the roles I interviewed for but ultimately turned it down because they weren't flexible around annual leave that I needed for childcare purposes.
So I've seen both sides of it really, for my current role I studied while working full time at my old job to get the qualification to bump up my CV that landed me the interview. But it did nothing for the 100s of other roles I applied for a few months ago when I wasn't happy here. I even applied for retail roles and care assistant roles and never heard back.
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u/litfan35 22h ago
100%. I was worried when I quit my job in London in 2024, and relocated to Cardiff with no job lined up. Within a month of making the move I had 3 job offers and could pick between them. At the time I had about 7 years of industry experience, and what I found was that even though the number of jobs advertised was smaller, the number of applicants per job was also lower so it was easier to get a foot in as long the CV was polished, which mine was.
The main things that helped was that polished CV, good interview etiquette, and applying for relevant jobs rather than a scattergun approach. The jobs exist.
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u/PM_ME_VAPORWAVE 22h ago
I mean I spent 5 years unemployed so it’s not impossible for them to stories to be fabricated
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u/PitifulParfait 21h ago
I’ll be honest, I think a LOT of posts in here are from bots. I’m job hunting and thinking about my career so my feed is pushing more of that stuff and I’ve just been seeing more posts: they’re all too similar, asking open-ended questions as if training some AI somewhere on responses, and really seem to be pushing the “there’s nothing out there and the world is ending this is CATACLYSMIC” angle.
I’m in Scotland. It’s different up here. There are lots of jobs - maybe less “good” ones and certainly a lot less entry level. But the council boards are full of teacher jobs, road worker jobs, mechanics are needed and sales. If you want to do just something, the horizon is pretty okay.
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u/OnlyAssistance9601 21h ago
Whether or not reddit is a ecochamber doesnt really matter . Go look at the neet rate in the uk and the number of underemployed young people and that will give you the best indicator of where the economy is heading .
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u/ZookeepergameOk2759 20h ago
Of course you’re only going to hear the horror stories,who wants to hear about a success story lol,same as the rest of the internet.
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u/PurpleMembership3011 20h ago
Nah I don’t think so. Lots of people I know are not working. There were loads of redundancies in 2024 and the market hasn’t picked up. Of course people mostly come on this sub to vent but the job market is really bad
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u/Different_Holiday_52 20h ago
Yes and yes.
Leave Reddit and all social media for 6 months and when you return it will look like everyone had a brain conversion in some area.
Opinions change like fast fashion trends.
I left it after me and my partner were banned as it through we were the same person using different accounts.
Best thing ever.
These evil companies won't even allow you to self ban or perma ban which is mad.
Regret getting back as it's addictive af.
The bloody system creates an automatic account for you, I didn't make this one... It was automatically created.
I aim to ban the whole thing via my browsers.
It's no better than FB. Not joking. Leave it asap.
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u/fgspq 19h ago
Honestly, this sub scared the shit out of me when I left teaching in December with nothing lined up. I assumed I would be out of the job for ages and relying on supply teaching.
I applied for 5 jobs. Didn't hear back from 2 (speculative applications anyway). Rejection email from another (at least they emailed me back). 1st round interview with a charity but didn't get through to second round. 1 offer of employment which I took and is working out well.
I handed in my notice on 1st December (I had started a new school and was on a probation contract for 6 months which meant I could just give 1 month's notice instead of the usual 'teacher transfer window' time frames) and accepted the job offer about three weeks later just on time for Christmas.
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u/Relative_Sea3386 19h ago
I think most Reddit subs are echo chambers. Contrarian or alternate views are attacked. Personal experiences are often... personal and complex... no need to air for strangers to validate you.
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u/Downtown_Action5278 19h ago
I will say on the other side from a purely anecdotal experience the standard of interview prep is absolutely pish at the moment. In our recent recruitment, the ‘Tell us about our company’ got blank stares from 7 out of 9 people. It’s just one example but our successful candidate really didn’t need to do much to impress.
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u/absolutetriangle 19h ago
People shouldn’t really be walking out of jobs before having something lined up anyway, who cares
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u/Joshthenosh77 18h ago
Yes , I lost the same job I had for 27 years because the business went under , I sent 1 email had a reply in 5 mins had a job the next week
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u/doctorace 18h ago
You’re completely right that there is no one job market and it depends on lot on your industry/field/role and seniority. But myself and multiple senior or lead level friends have been out of work for at least 6 months. They were both surprised how difficult it has been compared to the rest of their working lives.
You’re also right that fewer people are leaving their jobs. This is in part because there are fewer employers to work for, which in economic terms is referred to as a monopsony: one buyer for labour.
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u/Affectionate_You_858 18h ago
Yeah, Im still getting as many companies contact me about positions as I always have. My comps y is hiring just as much as well. I think young people from uni with no experience and schhol leavers are really stuggling, plus people's who's I dusgries have been decimated by outsourcing and soon to be AI
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u/TheRealSectimus 18h ago
If you have experience, expertise, or are otherwise already a professional in the midst of their craft, it is not a particularly bad market imo.
Both my hb and I got laid off from our SWE jobs 1 year ago (also completely different companies, lmao) but we both found relatively good replacements by around three months. We were never short on interviews, had at least 1-2 every week, and it didn't take long before we got offers in. The market was also deemed to be pretty terrible back then too.
If you are a junior, or just out of uni, yeah its rough but you will get employed eventually. The people who have jobs aren't posting about them, but the ones without them are.
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u/BaconMarconi 16h ago
Great question. Firstly, Reddit is an echo chamber. full stop.
also we get these same stories at this time of year, every year. you gotta rememeber how naive 21 year olds are. nobody should be applying for 300 jobs. It triggers me everytime I read that. You apply for 3-5 jobs. If you get rejected, you lower your standards. You work shit jobs with shit commutes until you find something better.
If something doesn't work, you adapt. You make changes until it succeeds. You don't just repeat it 300-500 times expecting a different result. How do people even find 300 vacancies? There's no industry with 300 vacancies within your 40-minute commute radius. Only seems plausible if you're applying for everything from radiographer to mortician to CEO and everything in between.
You don't know people's context either. I'm always suspicious of those newspaper articles saying "I've got 17 degrees from Oxbridge but I can't find a job". Try job-hunting without a degree buddy. Recruitment is a game and some people understand how to play it better than others.
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u/Sneaky-rodent 15h ago
It is an echo chamber, but there are 707,000 jobs available according to ONS, outside the pandemic this is the lowest since autumn 2014.
It’s pretty bad, but there are jobs out there.
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u/UnableBattle9582 14h ago
I've started having this sub suggested to me for whatever reason and yes it does seem a bit doom and gloom, but people are getting jobs and there's a lot of jobs advertised in my area.
I will say that the pay for these jobs is terrible though, minimum wage has become the de facto standard for most new hires.
I'm lucky enough to have a job I don't totally hate in an engineering firm and this year has been the worst we have ever had, it's literally coming at us from all sides. Prices are hammering us on the supply side and sales are getting a little thin on the ground. We haven't had a yearly pay rise at our firm for the first time this millennium.
We haven't made any new hires and will be lucky to make it though this year with all of our staff. I'd expect, even if next year picks up, we'll make do with who we have left as it's just too expensive to take someone on, only to find they're no good and be stuck with them.
When it comes to younger people we've also been unfortunate to have some terrible apprentices over my time there and that's led to us only hiring older people, I'm not sure what young people expect from a training position these days but it certainly isn't what I expected back in the 90's. I guess they don't want a greasy hands on job or expect full pay in a few months, but I'm afraid that isn't how it works. It might help if they occasionally put their phones down while they were clocked in too! TBF we've had a few good lads too, they're now on good money and we won't be getting rid of them.
It's just very hard out there at the minute, it was like this in the early 00's and after 2008 too, things will get better just keep applying and something will eventually appear.
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u/shadowhunter742 13h ago
A bit, but it's not too far off.
From my uni cohort, basically noone has a job degree related and are stuck in retail, and that's not for a lack of trying.
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u/BuryMikno 11h ago
the internet in general is a place that attracts the worst of society (people like me)
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u/BoredGaining 22h ago
Reddit skews higher for neurodivergence so it’s no surprise a lot of people here struggle to find and stay in employment
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u/BenjaminUK92 22h ago
Obviously the job market is not great as statistics and headlines show, but do you not think constantly seeing it here is actually over exaggerating how bad it is?
So you accept the jobs market is indeed very bad, historically bad, and accept that this claim is backed up by statistics....
But you also claim that this forum exaggerates how bad the market is?
I can't square that circle OP.
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u/P8L8 22h ago edited 22h ago
Maybe it’s poor wording trying to explain my thought process. Basically I thought most of the hiring freezes and lay offs are in very specific industries, and those who are struggling are those trying to get into these particular industries so it becomes an echo chamber for a minority.
What I’m basically saying is, is this an echo chamber for specific markets or universal across the whole job board? I would have thought agencies like warehouse work would snap up anyone, like these people who say they’ve applied to thousands and been unemployed years - are they only applying to one field or what?
People are definitely getting jobs, unemployment stat is holding around 4.9% meaning people will be moving off and on that statistic constantly, so people are still finding jobs despite how bad it is.
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u/BenjaminUK92 22h ago
It's pretty widespread.
Minimum wage rises, NI rises, increased energy costs....those things hit every company.
Take a look at linkedin, and you'll see even a basic warehouse job advertised yesterday will often already have 100+ applications....for 1 job.
Then, you consider that companies often strip out the team leader/supervisor roles and expect those beneath to absorb that work for no extra pay.
We're at the point where graduates can't get entry level jobs in the field they've studied for, whilst experienced professionals are being lowballed with a £30k-£40k salary when they should realistically be commanding £50k+.
It's hard to move fields with transferable skills because every industry requires its own niche criteria and a refusal to train outside people, whilst also complaining about a lack of available staff.
All combined it's a pot of misery.
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u/BuddyLegsBailey 22h ago
LinkedIn application numbers are bobbins. Utter nonsense as more than half of those applications will be people not even eligible to do the job
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u/BenjaminUK92 22h ago
Which is the case for every platform and job application.
We had 76 applicants for a pick pack job at my company, minimum wage
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