Recruiters say it hasn't been this hard to hire people since the dot-com boom of the '90s

Alan Diaz/AP

• A booming economy is usually a good thing ... but not for recruiters.
• Recruiters trying to fill jobs are having their toughest time in decades because of the tight labor market
• They're seeing more and more job candidates "ghost" them after agreeing to interviews and even signing HR paperwork.

While a booming economy is good for most industries, it's bad for at least one group of people: recruiters.

According to The Wall Street Journal's Chip Cutter, today's labor market is the tightest it's been since 1969, leading job recruiters to their toughest stretch in decades.

With available jobs in the US outpacing the number of people looking for work, recruiters across the country are getting blown off and seeing their emails and calls ignored, the report said.

One recruiter told The Journal that hiring a tech engineer today is the hardest it's been since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

"We've sat at our desks before and said. 'Are our phones even working anymore? Why is no one calling back?'" another recruiter, Kristin Miller of Corus360, told The Journal. "You really start to wonder."

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Particularly brutal for recruiters are the ways they're getting spurned. For example, they've noticed an uptick in "ghosting" - when recruiters help candidates set up job interviews and appointments, only for the candidates not to show up and abruptly cut off contact.

That follows a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank that said an increasing number of US workers are quitting their jobs without telling their companies.

"A number of contacts said that they had been 'ghosted,' a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact," the report said.

Read more: The job market is so hot right now that workers are 'ghosting' employers without even saying goodbye

Other recruiters shared stories of their clients canceling phone calls minutes beforehand or going through multiple interview rounds and even filling out HR paperwork before ultimately not showing up to work. Those actions lead to thousands of dollars of lost commissions for the recruiters, The Journal noted.

"Somebody has to be to blame," recruiter Chris Dove told The Journal. "It's just unfortunate that it's me."

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal »