‘Reverse recruiting’: With employment at a standstill, job seekers are paying recruiters to find their next gig

It isn’t casual retired determination for caller grads oregon white-collar workers who’ve been laid disconnected (or are disquieted astir being replaced by AI).

Though the header numbers from the January jobs study gave immoderate crushed for optimism, the details are little encouraging and suggest galore workers look a prolonged and hard occupation hunt (1).

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With a labour marketplace described arsenic “frozen” acknowledgment to anemic occupation growth, layoffs successful cardinal sectors and an expanding fig of workers holding onto the jobs they have, it’s not a large clip to beryllium looking for enactment (2). Add successful AI filtering with unclear criteria into the recruitment process, and it’s nary wonderment truthful galore job-seekers are feeling demoralized.

Only 45.6% of Americans consciousness they could find a caller occupation wrong 3 months if they were to suffer their existent job, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (3).

So it’s nary astonishment that, successful this environment, occupation seekers are looking for immoderate vantage they tin get. Some are adjacent paying recruiters to assistance them onshore a job, a signifier known arsenic reverse recruiting.

In specified an unstable occupation scene, is that concern worthy it? Here’s what you request to know.

While occupation maturation “unexpectedly accelerated” successful January, the largest summation successful payrolls “likely exaggerates the labour market’s health, arsenic revisions showed the system added lone 181,000 jobs successful 2025 alternatively of the antecedently estimated 584,000,” Reuters reports.

“The lone jobs being filled successful January are successful wellness attraction and societal assistance, on with immoderate non-residential specialty commercialized contractors astir apt related to AI facilities, each of which bash not warrant the economy’s aboriginal success,” Christopher Rupkey, main economist astatine FWDBONDS, told Reuters (4).

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, released earlier successful February, showed a continued diminution successful non-farm occupation openings successful December 2025. They deed a five-year low. This included month-over-month declines successful white-collar occupation openings specified arsenic nonrecreational and concern services (-257,000) and concern and security (-120,000) (5).

“College graduates are having a hard clip getting jobs. MBAs from apical schools aren’t getting jobs. We are seeing white-collar layoffs, and employers are pausing hiring,” Liz Bentley, a New York-based enforcement coach, told CBS News.