Ask HN: Is avoiding unpaid career prep/learning a viable path when unemployed?

About 2 years ago I joined a fairly well-known prep program for software engineers on job interviews. At the time I had been one year without a job and with some 8 years of experience, and this program was recommended to me so I gave it a shot. I did the several weeks-long course and the longer follow-up portion which mainly involves applying to jobs, attending one weekly meeting and checking in with my progress.

A year later, still no job offers. Therefore, I ceased doing my follow-up at the end of last year, and this year I really decreased my output for job applications, mainly limiting myself to recruiters. To meet a weekly quota with the interview prep program, I had sent nearly a thousand applications last year. My ratio of applications to interviews was still pretty low with the interview program, so I stopped mass-sending applications.

But I also decided to stop doing things towards helping my career on unpaid time, even as I'm still unemployed. Taking that prep course didn't do anything to net me a job offer and I feel I've put in too much of my free time already for not getting any jobs out of it, so why would I want to keep going when it all feels like a gamble? I want to avoid unpaid career building from here on out. Could this still be a viable path? I'm not going to sign up to anything or do any career-related practice unless a company is paying for it, or otherwise doing it on salaried time. I only make an exception for meetup groups since I count that as socializing and not strictly career-related matters.

A job can hire me and pay me to learn, I have no problem with that. On-the-job training is a real thing. But I don't consider job searching to be a job, because I'm not getting paid for it.