Job market is awful

Edit; thank you all for the suggestions, comments, advice, and solidarity. I cant reply to every comment but i wanted to clarify some things.

Im not a baby breeding machine. We did NOT have our kids when we knew we were struggling, and PLANNED to have kids while we are dirt poor, “oh we’re so poor lets have kids” thats wack. we are not that irresponsible. My husband had a good paying job in what was once LCOL area, we watched our neighborhood triple in price. Late 2022 he lost his job and I was already late term trimester, had our baby in 2023. I sold my car to pay rent for 2023 while he self studies using Udemy and Odin. Then, he was able to find jobs in restaurants, hospital as IT, then a small clinic for 20/hr. If we were budgeting right, we’d save 100 bucks a month. This job was supposed to be a temporary thing, he has been applying for better paying jobs only to be ghosted over and over, or have hiring freezes, or be strung along through multiple interviews OR be UNDERPAID. Im talking, he has 6 years of experience and they offer 35k/yr.

Then his mother reached out to us and offered for us to live with her rent free while he makes a career change. So, we took the little we have saved and moved 2,500 miles of driving to a different state. It really lasted 1-2 weeks, she later was convinced my husband was possessed by Satan and threatened to call the police on him and get him removed from the family. So we had to leave. So its been a week since then and he’s been applying for jobs here, 400 applications. But realistically it’d be probably 1000 more.

Single folk, married folk with or without kids SHOULD NOT have this much of a problem finding work is the point of this post. Putting in thousands of applications to be rejected, lead on, and ghosted in unheard of 20 yrs ago.. we are also not the only family where income is lost with kids..

I’m a stay at home mom, pregnant, taking care of our toddler. We don’t have a village and day care is too expensive, so it falls on me to take care of the children – while my husband is trying to find work.

He has 6 years of experience in IT, worked with software, hardware, even taught himself software engineering. He has gone through almost 400 applications with maybe 4 interviews, most of them were auto rejections thanks to AI. He has 0 experience in Software Engineering, has been trying to make a career shift from IT as our family grows bigger and applying for entry level jobs, but good luck!! He’s been applying to all types of jobs now, IT, help desk, restaurants, groceries, department stores, receptionist, office assistant, you name it!! But all reject him.

The market is saturated, pays poorly, and more than half are ghost postings. He hasn’t been able to find decent work since the lay offs, his last job took him about 6 months to find only offering 20/hr.. which was barely enough in a HCOL area. We had to leave the area to look for better paying work, and now we’re back on the grind. We’re now (for the first time) in credit card debt, we’ve moved into an air bnb and have about 2 weeks left for him to find work or we’ll be homeless. I have 0 dollars to my name, and he has about 50 dollars left in his. We weren’t always this POOR. It’s been going down hill since *late 2022

Losing hope here. Just venting. Idk. Ugh