According to new data from greenhouse,

FORTUNE Trending educated women are snapping up the highest-earning SUCCESS THE INTERVIEW PLAYBOOK Greenhouse CEO says the job market is so bad that candidates are paying $20 to apply for every role on the hiring platform and spamming bosses ATS CEO Is Cooking The job market With spam By Orianna Rosa Royle Associate Editor, Success July 27, 2026, 3:02 AM ET According to new data from greenhouse, which is one of the leading ATS platforms, job applications in 2026 are up almost 450% on their platform. Each job has an average application volume of 270 people. And what's happening is, is people are trying to apply to jobs. They're not hearing anything back. Then they're applying to even more jobs and not hearing anything back. And now you can pay $20 for a tool that will apply you to thousands of jobs. I've even heard about people building their own tools that apply them to 400 jobs in like, a minute. And all that happens is if you're qualified, if you're one of those people that isn't doing it, you just get included in those hundreds of applications. And companies just cannot handle the volume. Some of these companies now have A.I. Interviewers, but that's not helping the situation, because now you have an A.I. Application, you have an A.I. Resume, and now you have an A.I. Interviewer. And it just makes it even more noisy and more expensive for companies. A lot of companies now are talking about not posting as many jobs. They're talking about relying more on referrals, and they're even talking about using agencies that go after people who are already working. Because right now, the amount of applications that companies are getting is just absolutely killing the process. It's absolutely wild.