Lately, America’s unemployment rate has been falling, but there’s no cause for celebration. Recent dips in unemployment largely are due to increasing numbers of people giving up the search for work: so-called discouraged workers. More than once in recent months I have felt like joining their ranks, but not for reasons usually given to account for the growth in worker discouragement. Let me explain.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistic defines a discouraged worker as an unemployed person not looking for work because he or she believes that no jobs are available, or that there are no jobs for which they would qualify. By that definition I am not a discouraged worker because I am actively looking for work, and there is no shortage of jobs for which I am qualified. However, I have long been underemployed, and my experiences in the job market have lead me to an alternative explanation for worker discouragement.

Simply put, in my experience, interactions with potential employers are the most significant cause of worker discouragement. Potential employers discourage applicants in many different ways, and not every organization checks-off all the possible boxes. Yet, across diverse professions in which I have applied for positions (such as web development and university teaching), practices discouraging workers are pervasive. They begin, and usually end, with the first contact.

Like all professionals, I have several resumes that have been refined to present the information relevant at the first stage of pre-employment contact. Yet, far too often, potential employers demand that job seekers enter data contained on their resume into a web form, to which, invariably, the resume must be attached. Under the best circumstances, an application form is a hassle, but typically those forms are poorly designed, glitchy and not properly cached, forcing applicants to enter information more than once. In such cases, potential employers are discouraging workers by placing undue burdens on applicants. Completing a (redundant) form would be less discouraging if the majority of applications submitted received a response, but they rarely do.

Over the last few years I have applied for countless jobs, while a mere handful of organizations have acknowledged receiving my application materials. Of all the discouraging behaviors in which potential employers engage, failing to respond to an applicant in any way is, perhaps, among the most frustrating. It is topped only by organizations abruptly ceasing communication for no stated reason and with no apologies.

Those silences significantly trouble me because of their ethical implications. Two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers — Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas — argued that communicative reciprocity is what makes us human. To not respond to someone’s “call” is to deny the other’s being; to relate to an “I” as an “It,” it to treat a fellow human being like a mere object. Job applicants may appear as disembodied data points to managers, but we are decidedly human; acknowledging that fact by not ignoring us is the least potential employers could do to stop contributing to worker discouragement.

On those rare occasions that a response to one of my applications arrives, and it contains an invitation to interview, the discouragement of potential employers transitions from the impersonal to the decidedly personal.

Consider questions we have all been asked about why we want to work for an organization or what are our career goals. The former question begs for a disingenuous response – because citing the need for money is somehow socially unacceptable in the labor market – while the latter reveals potential employers’ ignorance of the “new normal.” Those types of questions generate little information of value in hiring decisions, and they discourage workers by reminding us of hopes and plans, derailed, if not decimated, by forces beyond our control.

Are interactions like those discussed above just minor aggravations? Perhaps. Certainly such experiences are easily written off during a job search lasting a few weeks. But, when the hunt for “good work” grinds on for months or years, tiny indignations pile up, each feeling heavier than the last, and more difficult to shrug off. For many, exit from the labor force may be the only apparent relief. As for myself, I solider on, bemused by the fact that those who would judge my fitness for employment continually fail to demonstrate the professional and personal qualities required for such a responsibility.