By the time I graduated, it was mostly temp firms that handled the recruitment - and FYI, they absolutely follow the "hire fast, fire fast" mantra. So while you could land work the next day, you could just as easily get fired from the same gig 2 hours into work. That's how fast it went.
This is turn made people stick around shitty gigs, if they knew that meant job security for the next 3-6 months. And once you start turning down other gigs, you might not get called up again, ever again. It's not that you're implicitly getting "blackballed", but rather that by the time you're calling back for work, they've gotten N new candidates working, and ready to go.
And the worst part? These gigs do next to nothing for your resume. I worked with college graduates stuck in such positions, graduates with decent and hard degrees. One year turns into two, two into three, three into five...and before they know it, they've worked these shitty gigs long enough that their degrees start to lose value. But you gotta pay rent each and every month, so what can you do?
For some more meat to this story - my least favorite gigs, which I consider stereotypical "shitty jobs" in this segment of jobs:
1. Warehouse worker for huge transportation corporation: 12 hour shifts, extremely high tempo, employees pretty much throwing every parcel that can be thrown, to work faster. If the supervisor caught you slipping for even 2 minutes during that shift, you could be removed from that job. Shit pay. No wonder people receive broken packages, when the warehouse workers are throwing them like basketballs.
2. Construction helper. You're just carrying stuff up and down stairs, all day long. That's it. Imagine carrying bags of cement up 5 floors, for 10-12 hours. Again, bottom bucket pay, and you'll be constantly monitored.
3. Roofer hand/helper. Same as 2, but you'll be spending your time on a roof, often time just getting stuff up there. I once spent the whole month of February shoveling a warehouse roof, that's all I did for 8 hours a day.