Marvin Onumonu46% of UK jobseekers are seeing fewer opportunities in their field compared to before, according to a Jooble survey.
Data found that one in six have been looking for work for over a year.
Only 23% said they felt very confident about finding a job, and 36% reported being somewhat or very unconfident.
Jooble also found that 34.4% had been searching for work for between one and three months.
Just over a quarter (26.7%) had been looking for less than a month.
14.3% said they had been searching for three to six months, 8.5% for six to twelve months, and 16.1% said their job search lasted over a year.
Most jobseekers submitted between one and five applications per week, at 56.2%.
20.9% applied to six to 10 roles, 10.8% to 11 to 20, 4.9% to 21 to 30, and 7.3% said they applied to more than 30 jobs each week.
When asked about confidence, just under a quarter (23%) said they felt very confident about finding suitable employment.
14.9% said they were somewhat confident. 26% reported feeling neutral, 20.1% somewhat unconfident, and 15.9% very unconfident.
20.4% thought they would find a job in less than a month, while 32.9% expected it would take one to three months.
20.4% thought it would take three to six months, 10% predicted six to twelve months, and 14.9% expected to be searching for more than a year.
Main barriers included lack of suitable job openings at 25.9%, lack of feedback from employers at 21.9%, high competition at 17.3%, skills mismatch at 9.3%, time-consuming processes at 8.8%, and limited networking at 4.4%.
Other issues mentioned were health, disabilities, long breaks from work, recruitment processes, low salaries, and location or mobility problems.
46.9% of jobseekers said recent economic changes including automation and artificial intelligence (AI) had affected their ability to find work.
46.3% reported fewer opportunities in their field compared to before.
23.6% said they were new to the labour market so could not compare.
Views on automation and AI were mixed. 23.4% said they were significantly concerned AI may negatively affect their prospects, and 23.6% were somewhat concerned.
26.8% were not particularly worried, 7.8% were not concerned at all, and 18.4% said they did not feel informed enough to assess the impact.
A majority, 52.8%, said they were considering upskilling or reskilling to boost their chances of employment, and 16.4% said they were already doing so.
