Seriously, i hate this economy, recession with a huge passion.
I don't think that whenever the economy is doing better, this will be different. Employers, will now see that they need to put expectations on possible employees, thus I can't see this changing.
Also, which is something I read as a comment on a blog on this board sometime ago. Nowadays, with overpopulation (in a sense) we have to create jobs, just for the sake of getting people employed. For instance; there's 100 jobs, and 120 people. Thus they have to create 20 extra jobs somehow. And to be honest, with every development that's either A. stuff being outsourced to lower wage countries or B. being a mechanized/electronical process, even those 100 jobs available are shrinking.
And also; shrinking positions because of outsourcing, can you blame them? It's not really than a company is not entitled to make money, thus they will located their factory where people only earn (and probably can live of) less than a quarter of what people need in the western world.
Another reason why employees are that strict on hiring people is because apparently there's a lot of people that do not take their responsibiltiies seriously. While you might be responsible, show up on time and just do your job the way you need to, there are people that just don't care and rather fool around on the boss' expense. That's where extensive screening and all comes from. It's A. a deterrent for such people and B. an index to see how you are as a person. Thus, that's something you can thank previous generations for that didn't consider their job to be "a goal" but just something for fun.
Actualy, from what I've seen around here (and I'm talking The Netherlands)... supermarket cashiers, as well as say... McDonalds cashiers, but also people who work at a warehouse, are kinda required to have some kind of education. Granted it's only a high school diploma you'd need, but with that you need some kind of "capacity" to do that job, and you need a paper to prove it. Likewise, we have it set up that if you're under 27 and you file for social security the job center will see how they can put you back in school (even if it's a shorter course) to get you employed in the long run. Of course, people with a disability of sorts have it harder, but they don't file for social security in general.
So I can't really believe a job center in your area will not have some kind of "route" for you to go in how to fix A. getting some papers that prove you're not stupid and B. if you can't, cause of your disorder, I don't understand why you're not looking into disability programs (because I can't imagine they're not around). It's clear you cannot get a job by the "normal" route, so why keep trying that and get stressed out over it.