Even with a working spouse, one income isn't enough anymore. I really don't know what people are supposed to do. Every industry except healthcare has been bleeding for months

Healthcare has also been bleeding. My local news has run multiple stories over the past few months of massive hospital layoffs. No more Medicaid revenue means no ability to pay staff that provide those services.

Can't find jobs to get paid and afford/qualify for healthcare which pays for health providers and medical practitioners.

Truly the Upside-Down States of Amerikkka.

This feels like corporate propaganda meant to discourage job seekers and make people willing to take worse jobs at worse pay. It's full of anecdotes and emotion, and the few hard numbers are without historical context.

Labor force participation among 25-54 year olds is at all-time high. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 It's lower in all workers https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART but that seems likely to be influenced by early retirements and more people 18-24 staying in school longer. My favorite graph - unemployed people and unfilled jobs - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1CJfC is swinging back to more job openings than people searching.

This is not to diminish the struggle of people looking for work, or the struggle of people just to afford basic necessities. I am just suspicious of the steady drum beat of 'times are harder now than ever before' from corporate media, because I have heard that story constantly for years.

Adding to this, rural hospitals are closing. Healthcare is hemorrhaging too.

Perhaps the difference in anecdotal reports lies in the widespread corporate tendencies to post hollow job listings. Positions they are not really hiring for, just "keep a pulse on the market", or trending data, or perhaps contact info of potential hires when they actually will hire...

Ghost jobs should be illegal. Any org found posting a ghost job should be required to pay a year's salary to every applicant, and everyone involved in authorizing the post should be barred from working in HR for life.

YES! It would make things so much better

The company I worked for during the pandemic is still hiring for every single position in the company. All of these positions are filled, they just keep the postings up to say they're hiring and occasionally find someone willing to do the job cheaper(what happened to me).

The city next to mine had its entire hospital network shut down, just because some vulture capitalists saw that the price was less than the value of the real estate it owned. They bought the hospital network, spun off the real estate as a separate venture that then rented the properties to the hospitals, which bankrupted the hospitals leading to their closure.

One of the things I'm seeing a lot of is difficulty in the process of hiring. From people I've spoken to who were seeking jobs, they expressed a struggle to get even a response, despite following all the best practices. From people I've spoken to who were looking for people to hire, there is a frequent complaint about being inundated with unqualified applicants, non-communicative applicants, and people who, to me, read like people burned by corporate BS at previous positions.
The systems we have for filling jobs are terrible, and the solutions people are coming up with are only making it worse. AI HR is being flooded by AI applications. People are using old school SEO tricks to try to get their applications seen by a human. Applicants are being asked to show up for multiple interviews and do make-work to compensate for the fact interviews are a terrible method of vetting applicants. And despite all the time, money, and systems developed to handle HR, 'knowing a guy' is still the best shortcut to a position.

They constantly say trade jobs have shortages but the trades have been dead here since 2023. The only people working are FBI friends, brothers and in-laws

This is why the corporate world, billionaires++, and their lackey governments hate Cuba, Venezuela and any other sovereign nation that tries to better provide for all their people. That and the resources for which they demand fair recompense, or refuse to sell if needed at home.