Reply to post:

In what has become a running joke of sorts in the infosec community, jobs labeled as "entry level" often ask for years of experience and arbitrary certifications. This not only leaves businesses short-staffed, but excludes a potentially massive pool of smart folks retraining or wishing to retrain from other industries

That's typical across all of IT, and other skilled industries as well (like doctors). NOBODY wants to hire the fresh, untried kid. Everybody wants some other company to train them and break them in. And it's not actually helpful, because every company wants somewhat different skills and has different needs and cultures.

Everyone wants to get the experienced pros, but at entry-level wages. So they have unfilled vacancies, lots of turnover, and pathological liars who know HR isn't actually going to put in the work to check their background. The companies who are actually willing to hire entry-level people and do a bit of training, have no shortage of staff, keep salary costs low, have plenty of skilled people, and those people tend to be loyal and stay around much longer.