This message comes from Normal Gossip, a Radiotopia podcast. Join host Rachel Hampton as she shares juicy, strange, funny, and utterly banal gossip about people you'll never know and never meet. Subscribe to Normal Gossip wherever you get your podcasts. Jobs. Love them or hate them. most of us can't live without them.

The unemployment rate has been climbing over the past few years, but we keep hearing that historically, it isn't that high. Even so, some people have been talking about having a really, really tough time finding work.

There's been reporting that some people are sending out hundreds of resumes with no offers

in sight.

Here's listener Jordan Redwine, who called in.

I'm not even an entry-level person in my industry.

I've been just pounding the pavements and just doing stonewalled, stonewalled, stonewold, stonewold.

There is so, so much AI involved in this process now,

and you're increasingly just up against, like, such an icy void.

Wait a look. I see you wincing.

I've been reduced to noises.

I don't even know what to say.

This is non-employment.

For the next few weeks,

we're breaking down

why getting a job

and keeping it

feels so hard right now

and how our ideas

about employment

just aren't matching up with today's realities.

In this episode, we're getting into the job market, why the decent macroeconomic numbers

...