During unemployment, we submit applications and find ourselves caught in an endless cycle of processes. We check our emails each day hoping for news, we try to explain our joblessness to those around us, and we struggle to manage the application workload alone.
In this search, we encounter injustices and try to overcome barriers. We can share part of what we experience with friends and family. But it is difficult to speak openly and name it directly. Why is that?
Unanswered Applications
One of the most common injustices when job hunting is an application left without response: communication abruptly ceases during the hiring process with no explanation whatsoever.
According to Greenhouse's 2022 Candidate Experience Report, three-quarters of candidates who reach the interview stage hear nothing from the employer after the interview. Most candidates expect to learn the outcome of an application within one week, yet this wait can stretch into weeks or even months of silence. Moreover, a large majority of candidates want feedback even if the result is negative.
This is not merely an inconvenience. As philosopher Niels de Haan points out, the hiring process is a mutual exchange: job seekers invest time, effort, and sometimes money; employers, in turn, have an obligation to provide transparent and timely information. This obligation becomes heavier still when the process demands much of the candidate—lengthy interview stages, unpaid assignments, practice presentations. When an organisation asks you to prepare for weeks and then goes silent, there is not merely poor communication but a violation of rights.
There is another dimension to this: some job postings may never have been intended to result in a hire. In what is called a "ghost job," organisations post listings for positions they have no intention to fill, or positions already filled. According to an article in Forbes, experts estimate more than one-third of all job postings are misleading in this way. In a US survey, eight out of ten recruitment specialists acknowledged that their companies post listings for positions that are either filled or do not exist. They cite reasons such as building a candidate pool, measuring salary expectations in the market, creating an impression of company growth, or sending a message to current employees that they are replaceable.
So while the unemployed spend hours drafting cover letters and tailoring CVs, the door we are knocking on may not exist at all.
What Does the Unemployed Person Have?
We cannot sanction the employer, we cannot stop the hiring process, we cannot reclaim the time we have lost. The only tool remaining in our hands is a rather old and familiar one: blame.
Philosophy has a long discussion about what blame accomplishes. One view holds that the primary function of blame is protest. When we blame someone, we tell that person or organisation that they have acted contrary to a shared norm and invite them to take responsibility for that behaviour. Blaming, then, is not merely venting anger; it can mean saying, "this is not acceptable, you must answer for it."
According to another view advanced by Kristoffer Moody and Makan Nojoumian, the real power of blame lies not in changing the person blamed but in influencing third parties who witness it. Blame may not change the blamed person; the real mark is left on those who observe. When we openly criticise an employer for cutting off communication without explanation, those who see this also internalise the idea that "such behaviour is wrong." So when we break silence and name it, we actually make visible an injustice that had been invisible to all.
This is why even though the unemployed lack corporate power, we have a voice. This voice matters precisely because we have no other tool.
But It Comes at a Cost
Niels de Haan points to exactly this juncture. According to him, blaming is actually sending a "costly signal." It is a way of telling the other side, "this norm violation matters to me, I am not someone who will overlook it." But there is a price: emotional toll, expended time and energy, and the uncertainty of how the other side will react.
In de Haan's view, the distinctive dynamics of the job market double this cost; for both employers and job seekers, silence is a cheaper option than raising one's voice. Employers find it damaging to their corporate image to openly acknowledge that they ignore candidates after interviews, so they choose silence; job seekers, when they do raise their voice, fear it will harm their own future prospects.
For instance, even if we think of writing something about a company that ghosted us on social media, we first ask ourselves: "Will this come up in my next interview?" So although a real injustice exists, the party that should bear the cost usually bears none; it is the already-victimised party that bears it.
This is why many of us confine what we experience to only those closest to us, to a few trusted people. We see it, we live it, but we cannot speak it openly. Because we feel the cost of raising our voice is heavier than the cost of staying silent.
So What Should Be Done?
When the unemployed have no other power, blame becomes almost the only tool available. Yet we cannot ignore that this tool has a cost. What we truly need are mechanisms through which the unemployed can voice their experiences not as individuals taking personal risk, but collectively and safely: spaces where experiences need not be shared in isolation and fragmentation, but where they can be brought together and, in their collective form, become both more visible and carry a lower individual cost.