You seem like a person with some skills that is trying to work. Is this a geography issue? I work at a factory in CNY and we are taking people with zero experience at all and employing them. Maybe not great pay but over $21 / hour with excellent benefits. We are hiring people almost every week and loosing people to other local jobs.
Full disclosure if I wanted a job equal to my current role I would probably have to move, maybe you are in a place where any job that isn't an inside deal isn't going to happen?
Have you applied to any tower climbing jobs? They're always looking to hire.
In reply to NY Nick :
We definitely have it worse than the US right now in Canada due to a weaker economy and a reserve army of the unemployed that's been overstuffed on the bottom end with kids on student visas.
I used to live in a place with probably the most inside-deal-driven job market on the planet so I know what that looks like, and there was nothing keeping randos from getting basic jobs there, so I don't think the lack of connections is a major issue.
I think something that's hurting me personally is the tech industry being a smoking crater beneath an AI-generated-resume firefight, thus making it pretty much impossible to get a tech job, and companies outside of tech being oblivious to that taking a look at my resume and thinking "there's no point hiring this guy, he'll leave for a job at Google within a month!'
But I'm also starting to think that through automation and centralization economies are beginning to reach the point where there are clearly just not enough jobs for the number of qualified people looking for work, and it's just hitting Canada earlier than most. Recently I've seen some hints that it may be starting to reach the US too.
In reply to yupididit :
I've seen a few but they require training/certs/licenses I don't have.
