Job seekers are spending hours compulsively scrolling job sites and mass-applying to roles in a behavior career coaches are calling "doomjobbing" — and experts say it is counterproductive.
The average job opening in mid-2025 received 242 applications, three times the 2017 average, according to Greenhouse data; one in four unemployed workers have been searching for more than six months, per BLS.
Forty-eight percent of job seekers say they frequently or regularly prioritize speed and volume over selectivity, and 25% apply to any role that seems remotely obtainable, according to a March Monster survey.
Career coaches say mass-applying generates more rejections and fewer responses, eroding candidates' confidence while diverting time from networking and relationship-building, which they say produces faster results.
Read more via CNBC
A new EU-OSHA survey of more than 24,000 workers across six European countries found that 29.5% of health and social care workers were exposed to at least one cancer-causing risk factor during their last working week. The most common exposures included ionizing radiation, diesel engine exhaust emissions, and formaldehyde, a chemical compound used in disinfection and sterilization.
Read more via Euronews
The share of HR professionals naming employee training their organization's top priority nearly doubled year over year, from 5% to 9%, according to HR Dive's 2026 Identity of HR survey. Experts say AI transformation is the primary driver, though a slower hiring market is also pushing employers to develop the talent they already have.
Seven in 10 professionals say they use AI weekly, but only 14% consider themselves advanced users, according to a Go1 survey of more than 2,000 learning and development leaders and workers.
Traditional labor-cost arbitrage has narrowed to below 20%, eroding the cost advantage of hiring outside talent over reskilling existing workers.
Training investment is going toward both technical skills and human ones, including emotional intelligence, communication, and collaboration.
Read more via HR Dive
A confluence of new research and pending legislation is drawing attention to the growing dysfunction in hiring, from employers posting fake job listings to candidates deploying AI to misrepresent themselves in interviews.
Experts estimate more than a third of all job postings are fake; in a 2024 survey of recruiters, 80% admitted their company posts jobs that are already filled or don't exist.
At least five state legislatures are actively reviewing bills to crack down on ghost job ads, with concerns ranging from wasted applicant time to data privacy violations to distorted labor market data.
On the candidate side, 93% of job seekers surveyed by background verification firm GCheck reported lying or embellishing during the hiring process, and 60% said they didn't believe they would have been hired had they been fully truthful.
Twenty-five percent of candidates surveyed reported using an AI avatar in place of their own face during a virtual interview.
Read more via Forbes, Fast Company
Since 2022, large tech companies have collectively laid off more than 150,000 workers, and the cultural fallout is now well-documented on Blind, an anonymous professional platform with more than 3.5 million registered users in North America.
This year alone, Amazon has indicated layoffs of more than 15,000 workers, Meta 8,000, Block 4,000, and Oracle an estimated 30,000.
Before mass layoffs began in fall 2022, Meta and Microsoft employees posted about career success more than four times as often as they posted about job insecurity; since then, the ratio has flipped, with job insecurity posts running roughly 1.5 times more frequent than success posts.
Workers at several companies described layoffs as abrupt and arbitrary; some Google employees still experience anxiety badging into the office after colleagues discovered in 2023 that they'd been laid off when their badges stopped working.
Blind is planning to release a feature that alerts users when layoffs appear imminent, and a product called Blind AI that would allow employers to simulate worker reactions to changes like stricter return-to-office mandates.
The whole mood has changed. It went from personal career planning to mass anxiety. To users talking about how hard it is to stay motivated when they might lose their job very soon, maybe tomorrow."
Read more via The New York Times
Among workers most likely to struggle finding new jobs if AI eliminates theirs, 86% are women, according to a Brookings Institution study. Most are administrative or clerical staff, and they are not waiting to find out what comes next.
The share of administrative professionals who say they have adopted AI tripled in two years, from 26% in 2024 to 77% this year, according to the American Society of Administrative Professionals' annual report, though only 47% feel confident integrating it into their workflows.
Women of color face compounded risk, making up 31% of workers in the 15 most AI-vulnerable jobs, while Black women's unemployment has been climbing as government employment, another historically stable sector for them, sheds positions.
New job titles are already emerging as the role evolves; administrative positions that paid $70,000 to $80,000 three years ago are now commanding six figures, though employers are hiring one or two people for strategic roles where they might previously have hired four or five.
Employers are largely leaving workers to figure out AI on their own, with researchers warning that the absence of structured transition plans from employers raises the risk of widespread displacement.
Read more via The 19th
A national survey of 750 hourly restaurant workers found that 97% report experiencing financial stress, with 63% describing it as constant or frequent. Nearly two-thirds said they had skipped more than one meal per week in the past month because they couldn't afford to eat.
Read more via Inc.
Most employers don't offer 529 college savings plans as a workplace benefit, and a new report from nonprofit Commonwealth argues they should. Total assets in 529 plans reached $569 billion across 17.1 million accounts in Q1 2026, but 60% of U.S. families still don't use them.
Parents with household incomes above $100,000 held 37% of their college savings in 529 accounts; those earning between $35,000 and $100,000 used them for only 17%.
Nearly 80% of parents in lower-to-moderate income households said they would open a 529 if their employer offered it as a workplace benefit.
Forty-one percent of parents reported tapping retirement accounts to pay for college.
Read more via PLANSPONSOR
