They Were the Most Sought-After Workers in America. Now They’re Unemployable. What Happened?

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On Feb. 10, 2025, at 7:32 a.m., the dreaded email hit my inbox. After nearly six years at Meta as a content strategist, one total company rebrand, and three previous mass layoffs, I got the axe. My time was bound to come. I often joked darkly that I was a cat with only so many lives left.

In six weeks, I was scheduled for a 30-day sabbatical. To add insult to injury: The company announced the layoffs were due to “low performance.” Despite years of glowing performance reviews in which I received high praise from my peers and managers and the numerous messages of support from colleagues, it still felt like being kicked to the curb and being called a loser.

I went on the offensive and drafted the obligatory LinkedIn post announcing my layoff and saying how very disappointed I was, how I planned to recharge, and yes, I was looking for work, so wouldn’t everyone pretty please keep me in mind for open roles?

Outwardly, I kept it rosy. Inwardly, I was fuming.

It was humiliating. This was a first for me, and I thought I’d seen it all (harassing a former boss to pay months of back wages while recovering from brain surgery only to be laid off anyway is a formative experience). I had more than a decade of experience in my field and a Big Tech pedigree that had reliably opened doors for me. I was confident I’d find work again—I always had.

The 2010s and early 2020s were the golden era of tech—aggressive hiring, generous salaries, and flowing perks defined the industry: gourmet meals, LASIK stipend, free therapy. The years since have been a never-ending bloodbath. More than 1.2 million people have been laid off in tech since 2022, according to TrueUp.Io. Because these are only the publicly reported layoffs, the number could be higher.

Recruiters used to message me weekly, sometimes daily, a few years ago. The options were copious, the outlook optimistic. After enduring so much job insecurity early on in my career, I thought I had made it. In the past year, though, I’ve applied to at least 100 roles for which I was an excellent fit. I’ve secured referrals, used A.I. to customize my résumé and cover letter (which one survey shows is only overwhelming and slowing down hiring, so thanks for nothing, Gemini), openly shared on social media, and simply persisted.

I’m a journalist and writer by trade, so I’ve refocused on nurturing my craft. Last year, I wrote and published a children’s book. I started pitching to publications again and picked up activities that proverbially filled my cup: I learned pottery, organized community events, fundraised for mutual aid, and started on neglected home projects—I even finished some of them. Some days, I’ve entertained the idea of opening a business (laundromats are apparently low-risk, high-success ventures). But that requires more time and energy than I’m willing to sacrifice while raising a young child and entertaining my dreams of becoming a star potter.

But my job prospects have been bleak. I’ve interviewed for three full-time roles and one fixed-term contract role in more than a year. I’ve never felt so unemployable.

My story isn’t unique. Tech workers across the industry are struggling to regain employment in their fields despite relentless searching, experiencing burnout on top of unemployment. People like me, once heavily recruited and flush with career choices, now can’t catch a break. The applications go unanswered, the layoffs keep mounting, and we clamor over the few jobs left, wondering whether we’ve overstayed the party in Silicon Valley.

“I applied to hundreds of roles over several months. But the process was extremely slow and led nowhere,” technical recruiter A. Kapadia, who asked that her full name not be disclosed, told me. Kapadia was laid off in March 2024 and has held two short-lived roles since, supporting herself through paid content creation and side jobs like dog-sitting. “As a recruiter, I know how competitive things are in this job market. Hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for one job, and hiring has become slow. Knowing this made it so hard for me to stay optimistic.”

Losing my cushy tech compensation package was obviously a huge hit. Gratefully, I live in a dual-income household where my spouse is gainfully employed and compensated well. But that’s not the case for everyone, and some aren’t yet ready to give up on the tech dream.

“I’m still applying mostly in tech,” Liz Daley Khan told me. Daley Khan is a knowledge management professional and people manager who was laid off from Uber in March after nearly nine years. Daley Khan’s wife was laid off from her own tech job in November 2025, and the two were dependent on Daley Khan’s income and health insurance to pay for their home’s mortgage, treat chronic health conditions, and care for a recently adopted cat.

“Totally shamelessly, it’s where the money is,” she said. “In order to not take a massive pay cut, I’m going to have to try to stay within tech. I don’t have time to wallow any longer. With my wife and I both looking for jobs, every plan is Plan A. I’m applying to everything. Staying busy has helped keep the anxiety at bay, but the fear that our savings will run out is real.”

Others, exhausted by the dead ends, have been forced to leave the industry altogether. Alyssa Galvan, a content strategist and editor who worked at Meta for more than seven years before being laid off, told me that between May 2023 and August 2024, she had just two job interviews.

“One was a phone interview with an agency contracted with Meta that offered me my previous job—as a contractor for half the pay and no benefits. I declined it,” she said. “The other was for a retail position at a local Kohl’s, which ghosted me.”

I, too, was recruited for my exact role at Meta by numerous staffing agencies for months. Like Galvan, it was for a fraction of the pay and without benefits. Galvan, whose husband was also unemployed after a tech layoff, eventually enrolled in graduate school and currently works part-time as a writing tutor and editor of various blogs and journals at San Jose State University.

“I wasn’t having any success finding a job in the field I had spent 10 years in, and it was extremely demoralizing,” she said. Pivoting was her “best chance at obtaining gainful employment,” she added.

Historically, economic downturns are normal and are followed by periods of growth. And the U.S. job market overall is experiencing a slowdown, with hiring rates dropping to 3.1 percent, the lowest since April 2020, according to the February Job Openings and Labor Turnover report published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the tech industry’s stability has been waning for the last four years, and significantly trailed the rest of the U.S. labor market.

“Tech in particular has gone from adding 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per year to losing 10,000 to 50,000 jobs per year in one of the worst swings of any sector,” Joseph Politano, founder of the Apricitas Economics newsletter, told me. “Some of the headlines can be overexaggerated, but this is genuinely the worst tech job market in decades, and if the hiring slump persists for another year, this downturn will be the longest on record.”

What’s particularly frustrating is that many CEOs admit they over-hired during COVID and are now cutting costs to improve “efficiency” and to ramp up A.I. infrastructure. Not only is A.I. a costly investment that companies hope will pay off by automating more jobs, but the layoffs are also occurring at a breathless rate. While I was writing this piece, Oracle slashed another 30,000 jobs on March 31.

Politano explained that the hiring rate isn’t even close to offsetting A.I.-related job losses across the whole industry—with many of the losses concentrated in companies that specialize in software that’s “easily replicable” by large language models. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that despite many macro factors working in tech’s favor this year, hiring has only gotten worse,” he said.

Coupled with sweeping return-to-office policies, people who were hired remotely or moved out of tech city centers like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco (hi, it’s me, your average SF COVID-era expat) are in heated competition with one another. Nearly half of Americans who’re actively looking for work report it’s been a negative experience, with many saying they can’t get an interview, according to recent Gallup polls.

It’s obvious to job seekers and recruiters alike that there are far more applications per job opening, and still hiring managers feign shock when they turn me down for a job due to the overwhelming response.

A.I. is largely to blame, yet again, for this, according to Tiberiu Trandaburu, CEO and founder of tech staffing agency Uptalen. “By adding the use of it, recruiting teams are increasing their productivity, but it’s leading to more noise due to the greater number of people in the process and causing over-filtering and missing out on good candidates who don’t meet rigid criteria,” Trandaburu told me.

I eventually landed a fixed-term contract role at another big tech company. I’m paid 25 percent less than I was for my job at Meta, with five annual PTO days and zero paid holidays, and I’m overqualified for the work I do. Nonetheless, I’m grateful to be employed—and in the field I’ve invested so much of my career in. But I’m also exhausted. I feel like I’m trapped in a maze that keeps changing its configuration, and I dread the state of the job market when my contract ends in a few months.

Best-case scenario: It’ll be a jobseeker’s market again (soon), A.I. will really pan out to be a tech revolution, and we’ll all live happily ever after … but at what cost? Historic unemployment, lower quality of life and sunken morale among workers—and it won’t be without consequence.

What tech leaders fail to grasp is that as they reprioritize toward a technology that’s positioned to displace more workers, they’re sending a message: Profits trump all and workers are fat to trim, so, fall in line—the golden era of tech is dead.

Forty-nine percent of the American workforce says they’re struggling, according to Gallup, the first time it’s outnumbered the percentage of folks who say they’re thriving. And discontent can be contagious, ultimately having a ripple effect on worsening morale and productivity.

The U.S. job market is projected to add 5.2 million jobs through 2034. The health care and social assistance industries are expected to experience the largest job growth and be the fastest-growing industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tech is playing a risky game of chicken with talent—because they will find greener grass elsewhere. Workers may get the last word yet.

As for me, I’m not sure if I can wait around for tech to get its act together or the A.I. revolution that may or may not be. My pottery studio fee isn’t going to pay for itself—but maybe that laundromat will.