The $10,000 job search: why people are paying a small fortune to find work
Age: Depressingly modern.
Appearance: The bleakest, most soul-destroying thing you can imagine.
Hey, a job's a job, even if it pays only $10,000 (£7,400). Oh dear, you've misunderstood the situation. This isn't about people looking for jobs with a $10,000 salary.
What else could it be about? It's about spending $10,000 to get a job in the first place.
Oh no, I do not like this at all. And yet it appears to be becoming the standard. According to the Wall Street Journal, jobseekers are finding work so scarce that they're being driven to spend greater and greater sums to stand out from the crowd.
What are they spending it on? The $10,000 figure is what Josh Morgan, 45, paid for six months of work with a career strategist, who offered regular meetings, a personal website and access to recruiters.
But why? Because the time people spend looking for work is growing. In the US, it's now an average of 24 weeks, a month longer than a year ago. But there are other expenses.
Of course there are. Some people shell out for courses to keep their expertise up to date. Others pay for premium LinkedIn accounts that allow better networking. There are expensive job databases to subscribe to, CV-sharpening services and AI programs that train you to do better in interviews.
And if you don't pay for them, you get lost in the crowd. Exactly. At least until everyone starts doing it, at which point the services will jack up their prices to help jobseekers stand out from that crowd. And so on and so on, for ever.
Do you ever lose faith in humanity? Hey, buck up! You're supposed to be the optimistic counterpoint to my gloomy explanation. It could be worse.
No, it couldn't. Yes, it could. The economy could be so dire that jobseekers have to pay companies to pose as employees.
Thank God that isn't happening. You really walked into that one.
Are you serious? There's a company in China called the Pretend to Work Company, which lets unemployed people spend the equivalent of £3 a day to visit an office and hang out.
For fun? No, they use the computers to look for jobs or start their own businesses. Some Chinese colleges stipulate that students must find work within a year of graduation or they won't receive a diploma. So, graduates pay to turn up, then send an office picture to their tutors to get their certificates.
That's as grim as it gets. The man who owns the company told the BBC he was offering 'the dignity of not being a useless person'.
OK, that is as grim as it gets. For now. At this rate, there'll be a Pretend to Be a Pretend Worker Company any day now.
Do say: 'People need to spend money to get jobs …'
Don't say: '… that will be replaced by AI within a year.'
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