The job market is so bad, workers now think they have worse odds of finding a role than during the pandemic

Job prospects during the pandemic were grim. After all, companies shuttered their windows, business went online, and recessionary forces put most hiring on ice. Of course, most job hunters at the time felt as though the job market was frozen solid.

But now, job hunters across the country actually feel worse than they did during the peak of the pandemic.

Newly released data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds that Americans are less optimistic about finding work than they were in 2020, when the government was literally paying people to stay home from work. Since late 2025, the average American worker said they have a roughly 45% chance of securing a new role within three months if they were to quit their job today, according to the Fed’s job finding expectations, a portion of the Consumer Expectations Survey. That’s lower than the 46.2% chance reported in December 2020, marking an especially dire outlook for workers.

Successive warnings of AI’s encroachment on the white-collar workforce has workers fearful their jobs are on the chopping block. Aside from AI, economic headwinds such as unpredictable tariffs and a shrinking consumer base (the result of tightening immigration policy) threaten companies’ growth plans.

To be sure, the U.S. just posted a better-than-expected jobs report. Employers posted 178,000 new roles in March and unemployment edged down to 4.3%, a huge bounce back from February’s dismal numbers. 

Why are job seekers so pessimistic?

Aside from March’s numbers, the labor market has remained stagnant, buoyed only by health care gains thanks, in part, to America’s rapidly aging population. But Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist, described the March job numbers as a mirage. 

“Don’t take solace in the big March payroll employment gain,” Zandi wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It comes after a big decline in February, when brutal winter weather and a labor strike at Kaiser Permanente weighed heavily on jobs.”

Workers are right to think the job market is as bad as during the pandemic. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that hiring in February dipped to its lowest level since April 2020, the month after the COVID pandemic arrived in America. Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, recently said that for new entrants, it’s a “locked-out market,” thanks to stalled hiring and delayed retirements.

“Aside from the 2020 dip, the hires level has not been this low since 2014, when the labor market was still rebuilding after the Great Recession,” she wrote in a note.

AI’s effect on job prospects

The effects of AI are marginal but not insignificant, especially for entry-level workers. 

Recent economic research from Goldman Sachs found the substitution of AI for human labor has reduced monthly payroll growth by roughly 25,000, while AI’s augmentation of labor—the use of AI to enhance worker output—has actually added about 9,000 to monthly payroll growth. That’s a net decline of 16,000 per month on payroll, mainly affecting less experienced workers.

Amid the myriad economic forces contributing to the “low hire, low fire” labor market, many workers are “job-hugging,” clinging to their current roles out of fear they won’t be able to find a new gig. Some are even hiring “reverse recruiters,” shelling out $1,500 per month to have other people apply to roles on their behalf.

Today, more than half of U.S. job seekers are spending six months or more shooting out résumés into the void of applicant tracking systems, according to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Confidence Survey. And the whole job-search ecosystem is rife with AI. Applicants are submitting AI-generated materials that AI-powered applications are sorting through using AI. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic job seeker feel the odds are stacked against them.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com