Competitive in bronze rank, I suppose

It means they're competing with other companies to give you the lowest possible wage.

(And it’s losing)

I have some insight into this.

It actually means that:

1. companies identify peer groups of companies that they compete with for hiring,

2. they get aggregated data on everyone's pay from data brokers (they submit anonymized compensation info, brokers aggregate it and distribute the aggregate data to their customers)

3. they pick a market percentile of the compensation range of their peers that they target for various jobs

4. they build pay ranges around that target percentile

Effectively, if most companies target pay "at market" i.e. market median, it normalizes industry pay to the median. This does depress wages, but also provides upward pressure at the low end. Sort of like a price fixing scheme.

Some companies target higher than that, and those effectively provide upward labor market pressure.

So, "competitive" means "sort of near to or higher than the statistical median for this job among companies we consider peers". Unless they're just lying or misinformed - but they'd have a hard time retaining employees.

It means you aren't allowed to talk about how much you make, but you can trust us that you are making the same as everyone else.

That, or it means they want you to say a number first so they can lowball you

That's why you always say a large number.

that's what it should mean, but in my experience it just means they're lying and don't want to put out numbers

I've done the market comparisons so I could determine wage ranges for my department. I've also done interviews with other companies in the same timeframe, and those companies that were "competitive" were always like 10-30% under the average. I'm convinced some of them intentionally choose to misrepresent the numbers by figuring that $x hourly rate resulting in an annual pay of $y due to overtime means they're "competitive" to the annual salary data that is normalized to forty hour weeks. I don't see how else they could get it wrong.

My number is 20-30% more than I'm making now. They hear it early in the process. It's up to them to keep going if they can afford me.

This only works if you're interviewing while employed though.

It means it's time to learn photoshop or https://paint.net/ or something, and edit the numbers on your three most recent pay stubs to give yourself an imaginary 30% raise, then submit those to the company considering hiring you and ask for a match. Then work there long enough to get three real paystubs at that amount to submit to another company that won't ever consider auditing the pay stubs given to your previous employer.

...probably don't do this if your job requires a specialty license that you could lose; or if you work for the govt or something that you'd be risking jail time for. Or if your field is in some niche specialty where word will quickly spread to the remaining very small pool of potential employers. But if the only potential consequence is a rejection, fuck it. Even if you get a rejection where you're just another replaceable drone in their eyes anyway, just keep trying until one bites.

I have always just added 20-30% to my last wage if I'm asked.

They won't lowball you below range, though. So it is a "competitive" salary in that sense. It almost always behooves you to ask for more than you reasonably think they would give you.

Also, usually recruiters are judged almost exclusively on "time to fill", meaning they aren't judged by how cheaply they get people in the door, just how fast they do it.