Job Market Struggles: Why You're Not Hearing Back 📉

Job seekers face low response rates as unemployment rises. Discover why your applications might be going unanswered and what’s really happening.

Job Market Struggles: Why You're Not Hearing Back 📉
NPR Podcasts
18.1K views • Jan 26, 2026
Job Market Struggles: Why You're Not Hearing Back 📉

About this video

Job seekers are sending out hundreds of applications. Here’s why they’re not hearing back.

The unemployment rate has been climbing over the past few years, but historically, it isn’t that high… Even so, some people have been talking about having a really, really rough time finding work. Brittany is joined by Wailin Wong (https://www.npr.org/people/1093418997/wailin-wong) , co-host of NPR’s Indicator podcast, and Nitish Pahwa (https://slate.com/author/nitish-pahwa) , staff writer for business and tech at Slate, to get into why the decent macroeconomic numbers aren’t adding up for job seekers and why the market might be stuck in an “AI doom loop.”

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18.1K

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23:57

Published

Jan 26, 2026

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