Growing up people of our generation were told that if you simply apply a resume and do an interview or two you get a job, and that if you don't find one you aren't "really looking." That was the entirety of the equation. That's simply not true anymore.
Things have changed a lot, and very quickly.
One thing that really hit this home for me was back in 2015 when I went to visit some old professors of mine after a year in the work force I was talking to the head of the woman's studies department. She was helping her kid get his first job, and the way the application process had changed was a major culture shock to her.
The other thing that has changed from what we were told growing up is "climbing the ladder." That frankly just doesn't happen anymore. Workers tend to earn 50% more if they switch jobs every 2 years. Workplaces expect people to be trained from the get-go on these skills. There is less and less hiring new people to break them in to the industry (the whole "new employees must have 2 years of experience" paradox). For many people (particularly disabled people), this can get you soft locked out of the entire work force.
On top of that, job security has been virtually abolished. Layoffs have become so common that a quality shift in layoffs has happened where they have stopped being about sustainability, and have become more a way to push profit margins up and push for the illusion of growth to appease stockholders.
This is also a fear tactic since union consciousness is the highest it's been since the 1970s (2023 was "the year of the strike"). The capitalist fear the workers rising up, seeing that as "being overly entitled," and that they want to push for a paradigm where people are grateful for the chance to be able to work at all.
Also, and this one really messed me up to hear, most job openings are fake. Job openings are often used to harvest employee data (and possibly to sell it) incase they need somebody like this in the future. This also gives the illusion of growth, which satisfies the investor class. This also allows them to gauge the "supply" on which sorts of skills are available, so they can drive down wages by getting a better feel for the who else is out there.
This idea that employees are supposedly "desperate" for workers is just a way to victim blame them for their poor treatment and claim they are being "entitled" to want to be paid a living wage and not subject to unpaid overtime and terrible working conditions. Employees are desperate for LOW PAID workers, but with the cost of living rising very sharply in the last few years, that's not sustainable. Companies are expecting more well off people (usually parents) to serve as a way of subsidizing labor expenses.
Also, the 9-5 model is dying. Gig economy workers are not considered employees under most state laws, but "independent contractors." (the bill the state of CA passed for that was the most lobbying paid for any state level bill in history), which gets around a lot of labor laws.
This leads to "on call" work and the very concept of benefits entering a state of planned obsolesce in a system that relies on them (i.e. health insurance). On top of that, thanks to some creative business practices, they don't have to pay unemployment benefits since they technically contract these people through middlemen.
Another benefit to the capitalist is that it's much more difficult for these disparate workers with no central location and extreme precarity to get organized. They are too busy working, earning way too little, and as "independent contractors" it will be harder for them to unionize.
This stark cultural difference has lead to a phenomenon among traumatized neurodivergent people in particular called "trauma soft locked out of the job market." Their parents expected things to be like they used to be, and the inability to find a job was seen as a personal failing, often getting the kid chastised as being "defective" for failing to do so. Looking for a job is so terrifying, so stressful, and so spoon draining that by the time they find one they won't have anything left in the reserves to actually do it. Making the search almost irrelevant.
Capitalist are talking about the "good times" when people were being offered more in the pandemic, but these never existed. This is only a smokescreen as to why they need to use to justify rolling back workers rights.
The core of the modern proletariat is the precariat, and this subclass is expanding to slowly envelop the entire working class as capitalists realize this new model can lead them closer to their fantasy land of workers who are slaves in all but name, slaves they don't have to provide food, water, or shelter to.
Times have changed a lot, the very nature of the job market has changed rapidly in the 21st century, and for the worse. We need to adjust our expectations to what the reality of the market actually is; and more importantly, fight to change it.