I've been unemployed for months. In the last couple of weeks, I've been rejected for jobs as a pool cleaner, shelf stocker, and a state job requiring me to check multiple email accounts and watch security cameras. I've also recently been rejected as an overnight courier and software tester.

Whatever you imagine the job market to be like, I assure you it's worse.

Don't lose hope; I left grad school right before the first dotcom failures 25ish years ago. I think you'll find that when some novel technology erupts onto the scene, the job market goes through a shift of semi incoherence, that hits folks like us.

but, it's temporary and can introduce a way more enthralling era of jobs.

I hope you have saving to draw on. It’s been very bad for folks AB’s it’s only going to get worse from here.

I know people who don’t have to work so they have all but stopped even trying since they are just enjoying a kind of mid life retirement and working on whatever the heck they want to, including mental health and those projects they put on the back burner.