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For the brutal economy thing, I think that's a result of increasing technological sophistication requiring increasingly demanding skill levels from human workers. The economy bifurcates in two directions as the middle is eaten up through automation: roles where not much beyond warm bodies is required, say as in retail, and then roles where highly advanced technical abilities are required for filling in gaps left by automation.
This is a simplification, but the general trend is for automation to eat up moderately skill-dependent occupations. Computers ate into traditional office work but created more sophisticated tasks involving coding, but now the entry-to-mid level coding is being threatened by AI.
If an area is less technically demanding, it is more amenable to automation, generally.
Areas where this pattern doesn't follow are misleading: while ambulating around as a plumber, say, doesn't seem highly skill-dependent, ambulation is nevertheless a skillset very difficult for machines. There are incongruencies between human capabilities and those of machines which don't map cleanly to the pattern I have outlined.
I think one reason you're having trouble finding work is that there's been a major oversupply of white collar degreed workers for what the economy actually requires. Those sorts of jobs are very cushy and high status, but too many people have been going to college trying to get them, and now we're seeing an overshooting of the demand. Probably more tradespeople are required instead, but owing to the bifurcation effect I outlined, those don't pay as well as the absolute top-level knowledge occupations and are a lot more taxing, so everyone's trying to force their way through a narrow funnel to the top instead.
This might play a role. Even if I'm making it to the last round, Im still competing with a guy with 4 years of SysAdmin experience. Its so fucking annoying, especially because i try and put in a lot of work into my resume and my interviews. I dont see any solution though - the best thing could be to try raising the pay of retail and non college avenues artificially, but those notoriously have negative consequences, such as a reduction in hiring and increase in the price of goods.
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