But all those open jobs advertised!

What about all of those jobs you see being advertised?

A great article was written on this describing the problem of ghost jobs.

I have also written elsewhere on this site about a CISO who admitted to posting ghost jobs.

It's a nasty game being played with the job seekers who effectively have no rights. You are told to apply to so many jobs, you have to sign up for an account, enter your details, login to the account, upload your resume, copy the work experience from your resume into all of their stupid little textboxes, and then you never hear back because no human being ever saw your application. It's to the point where it's almost a waste of time to go through the traditional broken process. Personally, I get all of my work through recruiters and LinkedIn and personal connections. Recruiters don't waste their time on jobs which aren't real so that's key. And I make sure my LinkedIn is up to date and I'm active there. Between that and having an up to date resume on all of the major job boards, I stay employed. But I've been in this game for a long time and have tons of legit keywords on my resume for recruiters to find. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to be getting started now.

And what about the bureau of labor statistics saying that cybersecurity is a growing field? The BLS is basing this on how many positions we should have in the economy to secure our systems and infrastructure, not how many are actually being hired for. Pretty much any company requires IT these days. Even a home construction company has IT systems. You can't build a house without workers to frame it up, install the electrical, plumbing, etc. But you can totally do without a cybersecurity person to protect those IT systems for a surprisingly long time and the vast majority will. Security is always optional. As such, the BLS assumptions are hugely flawed and their stats are totally bogus.