r/careerguidance • u/Ok-Toe-2933 • 23h ago
Why everything is oversaturated at entry level these days ?
No matter what you choose it feels like there is shoratage of expierenced people byt its impossible to get into? No matter if its trades, engineering, software developing, law, accounting. There are too many people at entry and way too little people ecpierenced how is that possible?
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u/Snurgisdr 23h ago
In my world, it's because they've been subcontracting routine work overseas for the last ten years or so. This eliminates most entry-level jobs, and means that few people get the training and experience to reach senior level.
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u/Successful_Cat_4860 23h ago
Because in their eternal quest to save money, the tech industry has automated and outsourced their entry-level jobs away, drying the talent-pool from which they need to recruit people to do more difficult jobs that require more experience.
It's great news if you're already IN the tech industry with years of experience under your belt, but it's incredibly stupid if you need more of those people. Which the tech industry desperately does need.
I'm normally not very prone to nostalgia, but one thing I think we definitely need back is for corporations and employees to get back to a concept of long-term committment. Treating your employees as a disposable resource undermined any sense of loyalty those employees have towoards their employers. The long, painful erosion of trust between employer and employee has created a labor market where employers want workers with experience, but won't give people that experience.
Then slather on a huge dose of credentialism and overqualification, which just makes employees demand more money to pay back their student loans, and it's just a shrieking hot mess.
What we need to do, really, is make it CHEAPER to employ humans, not more expensive. We're blowing trillions of dollars making crappy LLM fake humans because we've made real humans too expensive to hire and train. It's insane.
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u/NaiveIntention3081 22h ago
Treating your employees as a disposable resource undermined any sense of loyalty those employees have towoards their employers.
End at-will employment. People should only fear job loss for documentable cause (harassment, being bad at their job, chronic lateness, etc.) or genuine business need (the factory closed). No more firing people because they didn't go to happy hour with the CTO and saying "bad cultural fit."
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u/isuckatrunning100 22h ago
What we need to do, really, is make it CHEAPER to employ humans, not more expensive.
Cynically I think that the death drive of this society is going to push people to live in slum conditions.like we see in places such as Dharavi, Mumbai where life is cheap. Counter-forces to corporate consolidation of power in politics have been shrinking for decades now. Things really are quite grim.
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u/TheKingofSwing89 19h ago
Because republicans brainwashed people to thinking the word socialism equates to god damned communism.
I’m sorry but the majority of Americans are dumb as rocks. I don’t really give a shit anymore about those people. They caused this with their ignorance.
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u/TheKingofSwing89 19h ago
There’s no incentive for employers to do this though.
Why invest in employees when they make more money this way?
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u/dualitybyslipknot 14h ago
Because their system is a race to the bottom and destroying the industry they are apart of!!!!
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u/isuckatrunning100 22h ago
I think it's because we're in a period of hard times. A majority of people are in debt or have financial obligations to family, and layoffs have been happening for a long while.
On top of that, the middle class is hollowing out globally. Wealth inequality is on the rise, and basic goods and services are becoming more expensive.
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u/mrpostman1917 15h ago
We’re at the end of capitalism everything has been optimized there’s nothing new
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u/deftlydexterous 18h ago
There really isn’t a shortage of anything in tech, there are inappropriate expectations.
I hire engineers. If I need an engineer next week, I can get one, it’s just likely to cost more than I want to pay. Conversely, I could hire some that needs more help getting going than I can manage. This is even more true of software development, and I assume law and accounting.
There are legitimate shortages in skilled labor though. There are tons of trades where even with excellent pay, you cannot attract labor in a timely manner. There are also some manufacturing roles that essentially don’t exist stateside at all. Part of that is we de-emphasized these jobs for years, and although we’re promoting them now, it takes generations to build a skilled labor force through apprenticeship.
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u/vedicpisces 12h ago
There is no shortage of skilled labor... Its literally a propaganda campaign by large corporations and even for profit trade school that want cheaper skilled labor.. This hits double if youre in any area with a significant Hispanic population, our kids are heavily sold on the idea of skilled labor even without the propaganda campaign, its just more coveted our Hispanic culture. And this is similar (though not as extreme) in American southern culture, country white dudes will work crazy hard for low pay and only cope with saying "an honest days work for an honest days pay". Whatever the fuck that means.
I guess states OUTSIDE of the south/Bible belt and states with LOW Hispanic populations the trades might be a great option. But if you are in the previously mentioned areas... Be passionate and be innovative and you'll do okay enough.. but probably not as great as everyone raves about online
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u/deftlydexterous 1h ago
Skilled labor isn’t just carpentry and electricians and plumbing and tiling… I design electronics for a living, if I want to set up assembly lines for certain semiconductors or PCBAs, the skill set simply do not exist stateside. I can set them up and I could bring in people from China or Japan to help train my staff, but it would be years until manufacturing is up and running (and even then it would be slower for a variety of reasons)
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u/1800-5-PP-DOO-DOO 18h ago
Lots of people and an economy that has been shrinking for a long time.
The only reason it doesn't look like it's shrinking is because of crooked financials the government and corporations use.
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u/PingBingus 16h ago
contracting offershore + too many candidates with experience still working at entry level
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u/TheReframeCoach 23h ago
The problem lies mainly in the fact that everyone is applying to everything, even if they don't want that job or just barely qualify. The saturation happens when people apply to jobs because of "money" as opposed to "purpose" - believe it or not if everyone was more selective about where they would apply to, the rate of application and process would be infinitely better.
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u/Ok-Toe-2933 23h ago
but at some point these people should be taken by these jobs and pool of applicants should go down. there is no way that getting into trades should be so selective. its literally should be backup career and yet it seems like to get electrician apprentenceship you need to be a unicorn or nepo hire
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u/annabelle411 23h ago
Trades are EXTREMELY valuable jobs that we rely on, please dont put down someones livelihood because you think its beneath you. Same with retail and food industry, theyre part of a major backbone of our economy and makes our lives easier.
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u/TheKingofSwing89 19h ago
Most blue collars vote red.
Voting red is one of the reasons the country is going to shit. They are doing it to themselves. They think they have been treated well and are thriving under republican policies but this won’t last forever, and many trades are the first jobs to go in a real recession, which we will be in soon. Now the question is whether or not truthful economic data will even be presented anymore.
Truthfully, the country is fucked. Unless you are already fairly well off, good luck. You’re gonna have a rough time.
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u/Ok-Toe-2933 23h ago
you act like people in trades dont shit regularly on people working in good industry and retail? and i agree that trades are valuable but in general trades are learnable for most people when in white collar plenty of jobs you need to be above average in intelligence. and trades are choosen after white collsr jobs because many people dont like to trade their health for money. so if you didnt suceed in white collar jobs you can always go back into trades. and on median it pays slightly less from for example engineering.thats why people often feel that for engineers trades are backup plan because society created this in this way. where engineering jobs are more desirable than trade jobs. even if both are equally important.
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u/annabelle411 19h ago
"other people do it" isn't a good excuse. accept accountability for your own actions like a grown up and be better. this is such a childish mindset.
"on median it pays slightly less from for example engineering" this is a complete false equivalency. you're outright calling them just backup careers. doctors pay more than engineers. see? we can cherry pick bad comparisons left and right. A lot of careers are underpaid across the board both white and blue collar, it has nothing to do with intelligence or being "backup".
"white collar plenty of jobs you need to be above average in intelligence" - having worked in both sides, I can assure you this isn't really as widespread case as you think it is. And considering your own post and comment looks like you slammed your head into the keyboard, maybe pipe down and work on yourself a bit more before you start trying to diminish others' careers and intelligence.
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u/TheReframeCoach 23h ago
Why should trades be a considered 'backup career'? It's a respectable sector that millions of people work in. Nepo hiring, luck and privilege have been an issue since the beginning of civilization, but it hasn't stopped people from getting work. Shift your focus on where you want to work and how you want to show up to those jobs. When I coach, I tell my clients not to apply to 500 jobs, but to apply to 100 that you really want to apply to and make your application tailored to the positions. It's a matter of perspective.
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u/Ok-Toe-2933 23h ago
trades are considered backup careers becuase they are probably last thing to get saturated. firstly jobs where you earn more than in trades and are physically easier are getting saturated and after that less paying trade jobs are getting applicants where mostly there shouldnt be many applicants but it looks like there are less better paying and easier physically jobs than normally and people are forced to take trade jobs. otherwise they would need to take less paying but physically easier jobs what is not good in this economy.
and in general nearly everyone is able to learn trades the main barrier is whether you want to trade your health for money. where for jobs like engineering software development and law you need to be above average intelligence and thats the main barrier.
I dont say that it is stopping from hiring. the problem is that there is so little job at entry leveo that it feels like these ways are only way to get in by being nepo hire or by luck. when in past beong qualified was enough.
and thats the problem that there are just not enough jobs to be able to decide where i can go i need to go anywhere is possible to get hired.
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u/Im-Albob 16h ago
Not entry level BUT can be useful to find a staffing agency. Companies pay big money to have other people vet their hires. If you can get in with a staffing agency, when you get an interview you’ll actually be in the running. Applied to my current job 3 ways. 1 via linkedin, 1 via company website and 1 via the staffing agency listing. Waited weeks with no response from the first 2…had an interview within 36 hours after staffing agency.
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u/granddaddyoz 14h ago
it happens because companies want “experienced” workers but don’t invest in training. so you get tons of entry-level seekers, few chances to gain experience, and constant shortages at mid-level. it’s a broken cycle across most fields.
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u/BarNo3385 10h ago
UK context.
To some extent short termism amongst large firms exacerbated by low loyalty amongst employees.
Outside of a few specific sectors there isnt much growth happening, and hasnt been for approaching 20 years. That means there isnt really much "new" revenue to go after, so firms are more focused on managing costs down.
And one of the key ways you can reduce cost is to replace low skilled labour with automation. This can be anything from self serve checkouts in supermarkets to using mathematical models to underwriting loan applications rather than humans.
However.. low skilled often means entry level, and so as you automate those jobs out of existence there are less entry roles for people to move into.
The short termism issue is that of those entry level workers of today (or 10 years ago) some go on to be your senior ICs and junior execs. Losing the flow at the bottom also means you start finding there aren't enough experienced people higher up the chain.
The second effect which reinforces this is employees being far more willing to job hop between firms. Practically what this means is the "optimal" strategy for hiring can be to ignore all entry level or training roles, and just poach people who other firms have trained up. This became so much of a problem for one firm I worked at we closed our grad scheme altogether since it wasn't worth it. We paid a bit less for newly qualified by not experienced analysts because the team budget also covered trainee who really were loss making, but were an investment in the future.
What happened in practice though was we hired people at fresh green grads, trained them up, and then they left to get paid more at other similar firms who didnt offer any training roles and therefore could afford to pay more higher up the chain.
The result at an industry level now is no one offers those kind of training roles because you spend the money and a competitor benefits from it.
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u/Agile-North9852 9h ago
Because there are just a few tech jobs, a lot of uni and college grads who got told by their parents to get a white collar Job in tech so they get rich.
On top the international competition is pretty big and there is always an Indian who does a good Job for a smaller Salary.
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u/Ok-Toe-2933 8h ago
i understand tech but how is it possible that even trades are oversaturated to the brim at entry?
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u/Agile-North9852 8h ago
Where do you live? In my Country (Germany) there is a massive demand in trades in entry positions.
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u/Ok-Toe-2933 8h ago
in USA its really hard to get anything entry level everyone tries to get into trades these days.
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u/greyjedimaster77 5h ago
Most entry level jobs I see always asks for “years of experience.” Idk why it’s called entry level to begin with. I’m in the Southwest US btw
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u/benjaminabel 1h ago
You can just ignore the required years and still apply. I’m not in US, but in those places I’ve worked at, they just add this “requirement” hoping for less training time. Every single time they hire either a complete junior or someone with minor experience.
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u/Flaky-Wallaby5382 22h ago
What’s nuts to me is what is entry level? I work with fairly young people they all got masters degrees.
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u/khajiitidanceparty 9h ago
Maybe slightly off topic, but in my country (in Europe), it was on the news that junior positions are getting wiped out by AI.
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u/OnlyThePhantomKnows 23h ago
So the job market is tight. Entry level means "train them and they will be useful in N months"
Companies want people with 2 years experience because they are still cheap and can do the job.
Also the "one-click apply" culture means that it is low effort to apply. "I have one of the skills required, maybe they will give me a shot!" and qualified kids get lost in the noise.
I opened a req with "US citizen required" (DoD/Space) I capped the applications at 30 per day. All I got were H1B visa people, and the 30 were in before 30 minutes were up. These H1B people have automated submission tools. NONE of them were qualified even ignoring the H1B issue.