Many Young People Give Up Job Hunting, Exhausted by Scattering CVs Everywhere
The bleak labour market has become a global phenomenon. In the United States, more and more people are giving up and no longer looking for work after months of facing rejection and fierce competition in the job market.
Dan Coda is one of them. The 40-year-old from Durham, North Carolina, lost his job in December 2025. Over the following six months, he spent more than 300 hours searching for a new role in technical programme or project management.
Coda sent dozens of applications, received responses from around 15 potential vacancies, and went through several rounds of interviews. Yet none of them ended with a new job. By June, he had finally stopped looking for work.
“The situation has left me exhausted,” Coda told CNBC Make It, as quoted on Wednesday (12/8/2026).
“I kept hitting dead ends and getting nothing,” he continued.
Coda believes the wave of layoffs has flooded the labour market with jobseekers all at once. Data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows the number of layoff announcements in January 2026 reached a level last seen in 2009, when the US was gripped by the Great Recession.
“The number of candidates has really exploded,” Coda said.
The phenomenon of workers giving up on job hunting is starting to attract the attention of economists. The US labour force participation rate has been on a downward trend since the turn of the millennium, partly due to an ageing population and fewer young people entering the workforce.
In June 2026, the participation rate for prime-age workers aged 25–54 recorded its largest monthly decline, outside the Covid-19 pandemic period, since June 1976. Around 720,000 people stopped working or looking for work in just the period from May to June, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long said those leaving the labour force comprised both men and women, with the majority aged 25–34. At the same time, long-term unemployment remains at a high level.
More than 1.9 million Americans were recorded as unemployed but still actively looking for work for more than six months in June. That figure is equivalent to roughly one in four unemployed people in the US.
The labour market condition of minimal hiring and minimal layoffs — a low-hire, low-fire environment — is feared to make it even harder for jobseekers to secure work and ultimately push more people out of the labour force.
Job hunting takes a toll on mental health
Psychological pressure is also one of the factors prompting some people to temporarily stop looking for work. In addition to the wave of workers entering retirement and reduced immigration, economists see certain groups facing increasingly stiff competition for flexible or remote jobs.
These include working parents, especially mothers with young children, as well as people with disabilities. Coda himself decided to halt his job search after speaking with his wife. She had noticed that the exhausting job-hunting process was beginning to affect his mood.
Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, even described losing a job as one of the most difficult experiences a person can face after the death of a family member or close friend.
A Resume Genius survey of 1,000 active jobseekers in the US in April found that around half of respondents said the job search process had a negative impact on their mental health. Rejection, receiving no response from companies, financial pressure and loss of motivation were among the triggers.
That situation was experienced by Haina, a 33-year-old woman who lost her job in marketing analytics in November 2025. After five months of fruitless job hunting, she halted her search in the US and returned to Inner Mongolia, China, to live with her family.
Haina said her condition began to improve after taking a break. “If you had met me a month ago, I was a completely different person. I had no energy,” she said.
She is now using the time with her family while reconsidering the direction of her career and life.
Choosing to study again and change careers
Some jobseekers are taking a different path. Instead of continuing to send applications, they are choosing to return to education to improve their skills or switch industries.
The phenomenon is not actually new. During the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the number of students who returned to college after previously working or being outside education jumped 30% between 2006 and 2010, based on US census data.
Celine Wang, 26, is one of them. After several years working as a digital designer, she left her job in 2024 without having a new one lined up.
Wang then spent about a year applying for jobs. The turning point came when she had to go through an interview process that reached the eighth round.
After failing to secure that job yet again, Wang began considering a move to the healthcare sector, which is seen as having higher labour demand and stability. She eventually enrolled in an education programme to become a dental hygienist in New York City. Wang started her studies in May and aims to earn an associate of applied science degree by the end of 2027.
For Coda, meanwhile, temporarily stopping his job search has become an opportunity to recover. He and his wife plan to allow up to one year for the break.
For now, Coda says he has more energy to spend time with his three-year-old child.
“It feels scary, but exciting. I think it was the right decision,” he said.