Jobs hiring: Why the US economy felt brutal in 2025. | Vox

There is no better window into the soul of America’s striving professional class than LinkedIn, a site that this year often seemed less like a networking platform than an extended group therapy session. To doomscroll through it was to encounter one post after another about the barren landscape for job hunters — laments about resumes silently filtered out by AI-powered gatekeepers and employers ghosting candidates midway through their interview process. Users with little green “#OpenToWork” banners on their avatars — the cheery mark of the damned — commiserated about sending dozens if not hundreds of applications out into the ether without luck. Key takeaways Outside of early Covid days, 2025 was by some measures the worst job market since the aftermath of the Great Recession. Young college graduates, along with certain sectors, including manufacturing and Big Tech, faced particularly tough hiring environments. Trump’s immigration and tariff policies are partially to blame, but some economists say that other causes predate his presidency. “After nearly eight months of unemployment and a nonstop corporate job search in this brutal job market, I’ve pivoted,” began one such note. “I’ve made a decision to take a full-time role at Trader Joe’s.” The LinkedInners were not
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