Facing entry-level job crunch, new grads question the value of a degree

Ever since she graduated a year ago with a degree in computer science, Maggie Chen, 23, has been searching for her first real job. The process has been grueling and impersonal, she said, involving a lot of ghosting and rejection, which at times has made her “a bit depressed and demotivated.”

Mostly, “looking on LinkedIn just makes me feel sad,” said Chen, who switched to computer science from biochemistry halfway through her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Davis after she got into computers early in the pandemic. Tech appealed to her because it seemed stable and full of opportunity – and because she wanted to be done with school after completing her bachelor’s degree.

For Chen, a first-generation college student, the “guilt of being dependent” on her parents after graduation has been “very awful,” despite how supportive they are. They encouraged her to follow in the footsteps of friends who are pursuing more advanced degrees to better their chances on the job market, but she is wary about spending more time and money on school.

“Everybody tells you, ‘Just get a college degree and you’ll get a job’ and it’ll make things easier,” Chen said. Now, “a master’s is the new bachelor’s, I guess.”

Chen is among the growing numbers of graduates facing a bumpy transition to professional life as they contend with one of the toughest job markets in years for people in their 20s. The unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 jumped to 5.3% in the past six months ending in May, up from 4.4% for the same period a year earlier, according to a Washington Post analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. College graduates in that age group usually have a lower unemployment rate than workers without degrees, but their advantage now is as small as it has been at any point since at least 1994.

As summer heats up, grads are peppering social media with frustrated posts about the job search. In interviews, young workers said they are disillusioned with unresponsive recruiters and employers, ghost postings and AI slop on jobsites. Rejection after rejection has left many grads still struggling to find their feet more than a year after graduation, forcing some to question the value of their degrees and pivot, while others take gambles in hopes of working in their chosen fields.

For now, Chen has an internship with a start-up in New York that she hopes will lead somewhere. But she knows she’s at a disadvantage vying for full-time roles in the current market.

“Everybody being laid off is applying to the same positions as me,” Chen said. “They obviously have more experience, so I’m at a loss, I guess.”

Shrinking opportunities

Growth among entry-level jobs across tech, finance and consulting – the top industries attracting graduates – has slowed significantly in the past few years, according to data from Revelio Labs, a workforce analytics company. Since the early days of the pandemic, employers have been adding fewer entry-level positions compared with more-experienced roles. Entry-level openings in these fields are down 33% compared with 2015, Revelio’s data shows. In contrast, openings that aren’t entry level rose 67% in the same period.

Lisa Simon, chief economist at Revelio Labs, said that “classic graduate programs in big companies just seem to be recruiting less” as higher interest rates and inflationary pressures weigh on budgets. In this market, “we are seeing an increasing value put on experience and expertise in a lot of areas,” she added.

Fluctuating trade policies and political uncertainty also are contributing to a “really, really cautious hiring environment” for employers, Simon said. Meanwhile, early career roles are “seeing the biggest declines from AI exposure,” in part because they often involve the kinds of “executable tasks that AI tends to be fairly good at.”

“There’s a lot going on, and, unfortunately, it impacts entry-level jobs the most,” Simon said.

Manav Raj, an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said he has noticed “a little more consternation about the job search” from his students. Among those working on their MBAs, there’s a sense of diminished job opportunities, Raj said.

Compared with what he encountered after graduating in 2015, the entry-level market today is “very, very different,” he added.

The reasons are many, Raj continued, pointing to hiring pullbacks in tech and other industries, as well as inflation and tariff uncertainty weighing on corporate budgets. And the embrace of AI is “changing the way companies are making these investments” in their workforces, he said.

“Things have changed really quickly,” Raj said. “They may have entered these programs or career paths in an environment where things looked more vibrant. Now there’s this sense of uncertainty.”

Razed pathways

Katie Donivan’s first job was scooping ice cream. She never expected that more than a year after graduating summa cum laude with a journalism degree from San Diego State University, she’d be back where she started.

Donivan, a California native who hoped to be an arts and fashion writer, knew she’d be “fighting tooth and nail” in a media landscape scarred by layoffs and shuttered publications. But these days, it feels to her as if the main barrier is that “it’s so hard to convince somebody you can write better than AI.” AI-assisted writing tools are everywhere, she noted, and she worries that adoption of these tools in newsrooms could be diminishing entry-level roles.

Employment of news analysts, reporters and other journalists is projected to decline by 3% from 2023 to 2033, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Donivan has pivoted to applying to marketing and PR roles, but finding even a part-time job has been a challenge. Reluctantly, she has started using AI tools to assist with her job applications to better her chances.

“If I don’t hop on the bandwagon with everybody else, I will get left behind,” Donivan said.

Jaxon Gryder, who graduated in December from Grand Valley (Michigan) State University with a marketing degree, considered college “the best time” of his life. But after more than 100 unsuccessful job applications on LinkedIn alone, the 23-year-old sometimes wonders whether college prepared him well enough for the professional world.

Gryder, who worked his way through undergrad, said he learned more from his side hustles working social media campaigns than he did from classes, which he felt were mostly “about hearing about other people’s experience.” He found it hard to translate the examples he encountered in class to the real world.

“They’d give us a study, and the date was 2012, 2006, 1995,” Gryder said. “And I’d be, like, ‘How is this relevant today?’ ”

In job interviews, Gryder is beyond tired of hearing: “We love you, but you don’t have the experience.” He is optimistic his upcoming internship – his first – with a digital marketing company will help him land a full-time job or open up other opportunities. But for now, he is waiting tables at the same Italian sports bar in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area where he worked to pay his way through school. His pay waxes and wanes with the crowds, and it has been stressful to operate without a financial safety net.

“I have that impostor syndrome” Gryder said. “If I get a job, am I going to be qualified enough? Am I going to know what to do?”

For Daniela Macom, getting a foot in the door professionally meant taking “a leap of faith.” In June, about a year after she graduated from college with a marketing and communications degree, the 23-year-old drove from her home state of Texas to Southern California to start an unpaid internship with a public-relations company specializing in fashion and celebrity.

The gamble felt necessary to Macom after the year she spent applying unsuccessfully to scores of PR and marketing roles, along with internships paid and unpaid. To pay the bills, she worked at an insurance agency, which made her miserable.

“The field I want to go into is kind of saturated right now, at least that’s what it seems like,” Macom said.

It was an uphill battle to convince her family that it was in the best interest of her career to quit a stable 9-to-5 job and uproot for an unpaid internship, Macom said. She often wonders whether she’s doing the right thing but said she didn’t see another way to get her career off the ground.

“It might be a huge waste of time, and, on top of that, I don’t have a job, but at least I’m doing something,” Macom said. “These companies want experience. Well, I’m gaining experience.”