The Persistence of Long-Term Unemployment: Deep Dive into Root Causes
As of March 2025, approximately 1.5 million Americans remain long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or more), making up over 21% of all unemployed workers.
The Rise of Resume Blacklisting
Resume blacklisting, in its simplest form, is the suppression of your resume by AI-driven hiring systems.
These Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and artificial intelligence algorithms learn from the data they collect, including which resumes get rejected by employers.
If your resume is repeatedly passed over, the system may start to “hide” it from future employers, assuming it’s not a good fit. This can create a vicious cycle where a qualified candidate becomes increasingly invisible in the job market. The legality and ethics of this practice are hotly debated.
I recently spoke with a hiring manager who vehemently denied the existence of such practices, shouting into the phone, “What you’re describing is illegal, Isaiah!”
Yet, the frustration expressed by countless PhDs, like the one who asked me, “Do you think my resume is blacklisted?”, suggests a disconnect between the idealized hiring process too many naive job seekers think they’re walking into and the reality many face.
As AI is new and experimental, and talent software companies consider their data "hidden" to the end user, the effects of illegal data mining, profiling, obtaining unverified data, developing personas based on the failed technology of biometric scanning, recruiters , talent acquisition managers and HR may not know the technical processes that fuel the "Score" or "AI Personality and Predictive Analysis" decisions.
They are all illegal and sadly, companies that have not done their due diligence, vendor/partner assessments, and quality checks will eventually end up paying part of the price of the economic damage being caused.