When the Safety Net Feels More Like a Trap
The job market is absolutely cooked right now, and I’ve been watching this play out in real time through various online discussions where people are sharing their employment horror stories. What started as one person’s cautionary tale about quitting their finance job due to burnout has turned into a sobering collection of experiences that really highlights just how tough things are out there.
The original poster’s story is unfortunately becoming all too familiar - nine months of rejections after leaving a finance role, being told they’re “overqualified” for positions they desperately want, or “too expensive” for roles they’d happily take at reduced pay. It’s a catch-22 situation that would drive anyone to distraction. You’re damned if you’re overqualified, and you’re certainly damned if you’re underqualified.
What really gets to me about this whole situation is how it reveals the fundamental broken nature of our relationship with work. Someone mentioned that we’re all “worth more than the sum of our productivity,” which is absolutely true, yet here we are watching people’s confidence crumble because they can’t find employment. The psychological impact of prolonged unemployment is devastating, and it’s compounded by a job market that seems designed to crush your spirit.
I’ve seen this pattern play out with colleagues over the years. There’s this moment when burnout hits where you think, “Right, I’m done with this toxic environment. I’ll find something better.” But the harsh reality is that the job market doesn’t care about your mental health timeline. It doesn’t care that you needed to escape a situation that was destroying your wellbeing. The market operates on its own brutal logic, and right now that logic is heavily skewed in favour of employers who know they hold all the cards.
The advice about having another job lined up before quitting is sound, but it misses a crucial point - sometimes burnout doesn’t give you that luxury. When you’re genuinely at breaking point, the idea of juggling job interviews while trying to survive your current toxic environment feels impossible. Yet the alternative, as these stories demonstrate, can be months or even years of financial stress and rejection.
What’s particularly frustrating is how the statistics don’t reflect the reality on the ground. Official unemployment figures look relatively healthy, but dig deeper and you’ll find people working three-hour shifts every few months being counted as “employed.” The underemployment crisis is real, and it’s hitting educated, experienced professionals just as hard as anyone else.
The discussion also touched on something I’ve suspected for a while - that AI is making the job application process even more nightmarish than it already was. We’ve got AI-generated applications flooding the system, and AI screening tools trying to sort through them. Somewhere in the middle, actual humans are getting lost in the algorithmic shuffle. It’s creating a perfect storm of inefficiency that’s making it harder than ever for good candidates to connect with suitable roles.
Looking at this from a broader perspective, what we’re seeing is the natural endpoint of decades of eroding worker protections and the casual acceptance that employment should be precarious. The “flexibility” that was supposedly going to benefit everyone has mostly benefited employers who can now treat their workforce as entirely disposable. When times are tough, workers bear all the risk.
The real tragedy here is that we’re losing good people from the workforce. Experienced professionals are driving Uber or stacking shelves at Woolies not because they lack skills, but because the hiring process has become so dysfunctional that matching talent with need is increasingly impossible. Meanwhile, businesses complain about skills shortages while simultaneously rejecting perfectly qualified candidates for being “overqualified.”
The human cost of this dysfunction is enormous. People’s self-worth becomes tied to their employment status, relationships strain under financial pressure, and we collectively lose the benefit of having talented individuals contributing to our economy and communities. It’s a massive waste of human potential, and it’s happening at a time when we desperately need all hands on deck to tackle the challenges facing our society.
Despite the bleakness of these stories, there are some strategies emerging that seem to help. Networking remains crucial - most success stories involve someone who knew someone. Tailoring applications specifically for each role, even dumbing down qualifications when necessary, seems to work for some people. Taking temporary or contract work just to get back into the rhythm of employment is helping others rebuild their confidence.
The market will eventually turn around - it always does. But in the meantime, we need to be honest about the psychological toll this is taking on people and maybe reconsider whether our current approach to employment is actually serving anyone’s interests. The safety net is supposed to catch people when they fall, not trap them in an endless cycle of rejection and despair.
To anyone currently stuck in this situation - your worth isn’t determined by your employment status, even though it feels like it is. The system is broken, not you.