100 applicants for one café job: what is happening to UK jobs?

In October 2026, more than 100 people queued outside a coffee shop in Manchester's Northern Quarter for a single part-time barista job. The manager said an earlier vacancy had brought in over 400 emailed applications. I run a small business in Manchester (opens in a new tab), so I asked other people what they were seeing. The answers showed a job market that is hard on both sides of the hiring table.

The story

BBC North West reported, in a story republished on AOL (opens in a new tab) on 22 October 2026, that more than 100 hopefuls turned up in person for one part-time role. The manager said it “shows how the job market is at the minute”. He also made a point about AI: so many written applications now come out of ChatGPT that he wanted to meet the actual person, not just read what they put on paper.

My questions were simple. Is this really where the UK job market is? Are job seekers finding it this hard? Are employers seeing these numbers? And is AI making it easier to apply for everything, or is the market genuinely that bad?

I put those questions to Reddit’s UK job market community (opens in a new tab). The discussion that followed was viewed more than 200,000 times, and the honest answer is: both.

What the official figures say

The ONS labour market overview for October 2026 (opens in a new tab) puts UK unemployment at 4.7% for June to August 2026. That headline does not look dramatic on its own. The detail underneath tells a different story:

Vacancies are falling. Early estimates show 691,000 vacancies in July to September 2026, down 37,000 on the year. The ONS vacancies bulletin (opens in a new tab) says this is the first time the total has fallen below 700,000 since early 2021, and, leaving out the pandemic, the lowest since 2014. Vacancies fell in 14 of 18 industry sectors.
Fewer people are on payrolls. Payrolled employees fell by 111,000 between August 2025 and August 2026.
Smaller firms are holding back. The ONS notes that smaller businesses may not be recruiting because of increases in labour costs.
Young people are hit hardest. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds (opens in a new tab) stands at about 15.6%, up from 14.6% a year earlier. An estimated 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training (opens in a new tab) in April to June 2026, 13% of that age group.

Hospitality, where many people find their first job, has fewer openings too. ONS figures show vacancies in accommodation and food services (opens in a new tab) at around 70,000, down from 98,000 at the same point in 2019.

So a queue of 100 people for a part-time café job is not just a quirk. Fewer entry-level jobs, more young people looking and rising costs for small employers all point the same way.

What job seekers described

The replies were full of people doing everything right and getting nowhere. Hundreds of applications with a handful of interviews. Graduates unable to get a first step. Experienced people returning to work after a break and hearing nothing. One person had applied for a customer service job at a local council and was told there had been more than 450 applicants in two weeks.

Others had been through group interviews for café and retail jobs that felt, as one put it, humiliating. Several mentioned roles asking for seven-day availability for part-time pay, which rules out anyone with another commitment.

Behind every one of those numbers is someone running down their savings. That is worth remembering whenever we talk about the job market as if it were a statistic.

What employers described

The employer side was just as striking, and it did not all point one way.

Some employers are drowning. One person put in charge of hiring had 500 applications in the first 24 hours and had to take the advert down. Only five had relevant experience. Around half were obviously written by ChatGPT, some still containing placeholder text such as “Dear [Insert Hiring Manager]”. The one candidate who wrote a cover letter specific to the role was interviewed and hired. They had made over 800 applications in ten months before that.

Someone involved in recruitment described scrolling through 800 CVs where only about 5% fitted the job description, and then finding at interview that many candidates had exaggerated their experience. Another hiring manager added a short recorded-answer step to filter applicants for phone-based customer service roles and calculated they needed around 5,000 applicants to make a single hire.

Meanwhile, other employers can barely get anyone. An entry-level finance role in north Wales paying £29,000 had no applications at all. An admin assistant job in West London had three external applicants. Someone whose friend works in London hospitality said her employers are constantly struggling to find staff.

The market is not one market. It varies enormously by location, sector and how a job is advertised. A role posted on a busy jobs board, or shared widely on social media, can attract hundreds of people from far outside the area. A rural gardener posted a two-day-a-week assistant job on a local Facebook page and had almost 100 applications in 24 hours.

Is AI making it worse?

Partly, yes, though it does not explain everything.

The Institute of Student Employers (opens in a new tab) reports that employers now receive 140 applications per graduate vacancy on average, a 14% increase in 2025. Two decades ago it was 38. It names AI tools as one cause, because they make it easier to generate CVs and cover letters, and says recruiters increasingly struggle to judge authenticity and potential. Those figures are for graduate schemes, not café jobs, but the same pressure shows up everywhere.

As one person pointed out, AI might explain some of the 400 emails. It does not explain 100 people physically turning up for a part-time job. That takes real commitment, and it says more about the market than any application count.

The irony runs both ways. Employers increasingly use automated tools to filter applications, and plenty of candidates are rejected without a person ever reading their CV. One reply asked why only one side of the interaction is allowed to use AI without being judged. If both sides automate, getting a job starts to look like a lottery, and nobody wins.

The regulator is paying attention. In 2024 the ICO reviewed AI recruitment tools (opens in a new tab) and made almost 300 recommendations, after finding some tools could filter out candidates by protected characteristics or infer gender and ethnicity from a name. Its 2026 work on automated hiring (opens in a new tab) found automation mostly used at early stages to handle high volumes, with concerns about existing biases being amplified.

Others raised automation of the jobs themselves: self-service checkouts, ordering by app, and the worry that entry-level roles are quietly disappearing. That is a real concern, and one I think about in what actually changes when the software starts answering. The work that disappears first is often the work that gave people their first start.

What I would say to job seekers

From the employers’ side of the replies, a few things clearly made a difference:

Be specific. The candidate who wrote a cover letter for that particular role got the job from a pile of 500. Generic applications are now the norm, which makes a specific one stand out.
Use AI to say what you mean, not to say what everyone says. There is a real difference between using AI to help you express your own experience, which I wrote about in how AI can help people find their words, and using it to produce the same letter as a thousand other people. Always read it, and never leave a placeholder in.
Check every application before sending. Name, company, role. It sounds obvious; half the applications in one pile failed this test.
Go local and go in person where you can. Some of the best roles never reach the big job boards. Several people found work by asking directly or messaging businesses.
Look where others are not. Location and sector matter enormously. Some employers are struggling to fill roles that thousands of people are not seeing.

What I would say to small employers

Advertise where your applicants are. Local, specific and honest adverts attract fewer but better applicants.
Put the salary and hours in the advert. It saves everyone’s time.
Use a simple, fair first step that tests what the job actually needs, rather than screening on things that do not matter.
Be careful with automated screening. Keep a person responsible for decisions, check for bias and be open with candidates about how you use it. The same principle runs through why AI should fit the business, not the other way around.
Reply to people. A short, honest rejection is a kindness. So many people said the silence was the worst part.

Something is not working

What struck me most is that both sides are struggling. Job seekers cannot get noticed, and employers are overwhelmed with applications that do not fit. There is no single explanation. The economy, costs, automation and AI all play a part, and experiences vary hugely depending on where you live and what you do.

For some people, the answer may be creating their own work. If that is you, the Going Self-Employed in the UK course is being written for exactly that situation.

To everyone currently looking for work: I genuinely hope something comes through for you soon. And thank you to everyone who shared their experiences, including those I disagreed with. Hearing real stories from people you would never otherwise meet is exactly why these conversations are worth having.