economy
February 18, 2026
The brutal hunt for low-paid work: ‘It’s like The Hunger Games
It used to be fairly easy to get work that paid at or around the minimum wage. But with a shrinking number of positions come ever more hoops to jump through, from personality tests, to trial shifts, to towers constructed of marshmallows
TL;DR
- Unemployment in the UK has reached a five-year high, with the 18-24 age group most affected.
- Competition for entry-level jobs has intensified, leading employers to implement more rigorous and often unconventional hiring processes.
- These processes include personality tests, group challenges like building marshmallow towers, unpaid trial shifts, and door-to-door sales practice.
- Experts suggest employers are using these methods to 'de-risk' hiring and assess candidates more thoroughly due to increased costs and challenging trading environments.
- Jobseekers find these demanding assessments irrelevant to the actual job duties and feel the effort required is disproportionate to the low wages and transient nature of these roles.
- Some employers may be exploiting the high number of applicants to be more selective, making the recruitment process more efficient for them but burdensome for individuals.
- While some tasks like role-playing may assess teamwork and communication, performing actual work without pay raises legal and ethical questions.
- Companies like TK Maxx, Inditex, and Wingstop have defended their recruitment practices, stating they are common or designed to assess relevant skills and personality traits.
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