The job market has been technically ‘worse’ but we don’t have a global ‘stay inside’ pandemic to blame unemployment on right now, and the job market (and us job seekers) have never faced this perfectly unique storm of AI making quite literally everything in this field worse for everyone.

I’m 24 with a degree. I have a wide set of skills. I should be employable and lord knows i’m trying. Currently ‘making do’ by working at Walmart. 8 hours of my day is spent at a job that makes me wanna (DATA EXPUNGED) and the rest of my day is spent taking a quick shower and looking for a ‘way out’ for literally any better opportunity. Barely have enough left over after utilities for anything and most of my little ‘excess’ has to get saved for taxes anyways. My lunch is the free ramen noodles left out in the break room every day because everything counts right now.

And quite frankly it was harder than it should’ve been to even get hired at an entry level walmart position. Everything just feels so fucking ridiculous right now.

Like at some point this shit has to crack right? Something has to happen that makes things go back to some semblance of normal? Or are we just suffering from a new component of American capitalism that isn’t going away until the entire country falls into itself?

I have a five day stretch at Walmart ahead of me starting tomorrow and i’m writing this post before bed as some way to regulate my emotions so I can sleep. This is the part of my life where i’m supposed to be in the midst of my ‘real career’ and doing something that doesn’t make me want to (EXPUNGED) every day I wake up. And there’s people that are way more skilled and qualified than I am that can’t find jobs either, which really scares me.

Fuuuuuuck man.