Underpaid and Overqualified
A Casually Intense Take on Work
Three weeks of unemployment was enough to completely destabilize my life. Not because I stopped working, but because the labor market has no tolerance for interruption (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2025). And when I finally found a job, it didn’t restore sustainability or peace of mind. It just patched a deeper structural issue.
This isn’t personal angst. This is a systems diagnosis.
The illusion of opportunity
On paper, official numbers say the unemployment rate dipped slightly, but growth is sluggish (Finance Yahoo, 2026). In December 2025, U.S. employers added just 50,000 jobs, a figure well below expectations and far weaker than any year since the pandemic outside of recessions (Finance Yahoo, 2026). Economists described it as muted job growth that capped the slowest hiring year in recent memory.
According to BLS data aggregated over 2025, total payroll employment rose by only 584,000 jobs for the whole year, down sharply from the 2 million jobs added in 2024 (Finance Yahoo, 2026).
That means employers aren’t aggressively hiring. They’re choosing carefully, holding off, or simply not opening as many roles as job seekers hope.
