> (in each grant application, promotion application, evaluation application, salary complement application, grant/project request, paper submission). Each of these has an acceptance rate, we are competing directly among other academics

I mean they're often very high acceptance rates though. The funding agency we use has a 90% acceptance rate. Basically you have to have some idea of what you are doing and they will accept you. It isn't as extreme as you are making out. There are many opportunities.

The main problem is that the opportunities are geographically constrained. I don't think there's a huge amount of competition for a given role, but the fact that it often requires uprooting your life (I moved from UK to Germany) is really bad