'A black hole': New graduates discover a dismal job market
42 comments
·August 3, 2025pvtmert
I think people have exceedingly high-expectations due to make-believe social-media content.
What I see amongst all the people is that both skill and the quality of work decreasing. Which is why, arguably, AI _is_ taking over entry-level jobs.
High percentage of new generation spend their time on TikTok & Instagram, watching reels & stories of some popular/famous people, who tend to have some money (high chance of inheritance or rich family), posing as a "regular" person on the street.
Take this quote for example; “I told myself, by 26, I’d have my own house, I’d have my own family, I’d have my nice little luxury car. That hasn’t happened.”
This is an unrealistic by definition. I don't know what sort of thing a person needs to smoke to come to a conclusion that having _all_ of these, including a luxury car, is a norm for a 26 year old. By definition, if everyone has that _luxury car_, that car would not be a luxury item in the first place. Unless a person inherits a house, it would take at least 10 years (probably 30) to fully own one. One can probably buy/lease a car, probably second hand, but that's unlikely to be a `luxury` vehicle.
Another point is, while some people had adequate pictures/images posted, some did not even bother to put an effort to give a proper picture to the newspaper article. I am not a "wear a suit" person at all, but this attitude clearly shows how much care certain people put into actual work. Would you hire a such person who does sloppy job even at the job application? I would certainly not.
cameldrv
In the baby boom generation it was pretty normal to be married, have a (small) house, and a kid or two by 26-30 or so. From the families I know of that era, usually they had a lower end car and probably just one for the family. This seems pretty uncommon for the zoomers I know.
kulahan
I simply don’t believe this is as hard as everyone makes it out to be. I still think it’s an issue of heightened expectations.
There is a strong belief that everyone should be able to afford a place to live, alone, in some place with a convenient location (downtown or within walking distance of transit), and then after a few years you should be able to buy a house.
When I grew up, I had multiple roommates, and we’d carpool whenever possible. I scrimped and saved pretty hard to get a down payment saved up. By my day’s standards, it wasn’t crazy to cook 99% of your own food, brew all your coffee at home or the office (hopefully free), get any free food you can possibly convince your employer to give you, and have one TV everyone fights over. My dad made his own “furniture” (until my mom moved in and smacked some sense into him…). My mom grew up sleeping in an hot attic with 3 siblings, because the other 5 siblings took up all available rooms.
I’m not saying life shouldn’t improve each generation, but I think people are expecting it to improve way faster than it actually is.
chadcmulligan
It doesn't matter how much you cook at home if wages haven't kept up with house prices (in australia anyway) - https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-charts-that-show-why...
mensetmanusman
The houses they lived in are illegal to build today.
alistairSH
Owning a home at 26 wasn’t unusual in the 80s. It is now. The average age of a first time homebuyer in that time has slipped by nearly a decade.
Obvious selection bias… me and most of my peers had homes, spouses (though not necessarily married), and decent cars by our late 20s or early 30s (in the early 00s). Various white collar careers outside DC. It often did take two incomes to make it work, where my parents generation was largely single income.
It feels like that’s less common now.
627467
I bet owning a home was also an actual priority back in the 80s. In fact I bet back in the 80s priorities were fewer and most people focused. Nowadays there are infinite priorities and "must haves" - many of which are way more accessible than saving 50%+ of your income towards a single purchase.
anigbrowl
This is an unrealistic by definition.
No it isn't, this used to be the norm.
Unless a person inherits a house, it would take at least 10 years (probably 30) to fully own one.
Most people say 'have a house' in the sense of having owner's title of one, not of having their mortgage fully paid off. You're being ridiculously pedantic while ignoring the fact that it used to be massively easier for people to get socially established on a median kind of salary.
Lucasoato
It's not about owning an house, having kids, or a luxury car. Most people just want to work with dignity, a mean to reach their workplace wether by car or a decent public transport, affording to live in a place you can call your home, in which maybe one day you could raise a family if you find a person that shares your view of life. This is not granted at all, for most people this is just not the reality and actually it's getting worse year by year.
Art9681
The thing is that someone has to clean the toilets, sweep the floors, maintain that public transportation, or have the skills to fix up your car, etc. Dignity means a lot of things to different people. If you live in a society that enables you to work with dignity, it's because there is a lot of undignified labor sustaining it. The things we wish for don't just magically happen. It takes a lot of undignified human labor to get there. Now let's say you automated all undignified labor. Now your competition increased a hundred fold, greatly lowering your odds if finding dignified labor.
And the world churns.
harimau777
I don't see that a contradictory. A job cleaning toilets or repairing cars can be dignified if you get paid a living wage, have reasonable working conditions, and aren't mistreated by your company.
mmcromp
Sorry but the down turn in the job market is real and absolutely worst then people on this website want to realize. most are struggling, juniors especially. The attitude of young people have nothing to do with that.
harimau777
I think it might depend on what someone means by "luxury car". An affordable sportscar like a Miata or a Scion FRS doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
The other things (home, family, decent job) certainly don't seem unreasonable if we weren't living in a late stage capitalism dystopia.
wavemode
Part of the reason Boomers had it so easy was that they weren't all Psychology and English majors. They worked in hospitals, they worked in manufacturing, they worked trades - industries that are all facing labor shortages today because people consider it beneath them.
radiofreeeuropa
My boomer dad grew up poor & rural enough he started life with a dirt floor and outhouse, puttered around doing odd & entry-level jobs but nothing that could be called a career until he was 30 (no college, of course), had kids and a divorce and child support before marrying my mom, then finally started entry-level at a railroad and worked his way up. Retired a millionaire, liquid, not counting the paid off house (their houses had all been bought cash since he was 35 or so)
So made or suffered about three “blunders” or catastrophes that’d make life extremely hard now… and his was on easy mode anyway. Five total kids, divorce and tons of expenses, not getting into his career until his 30s, no degree.
We still took a two-week driving or sometimes flying vacation every summer. By the time he was 45 or so our houses were huge and nice. He spent many thousands (when $1,000 was still a lot of money, and not two costco trips…) a year on hobbies.
Retired with more than a million liquid. Despite all that. And a million was still a lot around the year 2000.
It really was different for them. Way, way, way easier.
[edit] oh and my mom quit her federal government job after they got married and never worked a paying job again. That was on one fucking income. A guy with no degree or connections or family money working on the railroad.
neom
My sister and law and from what I can tell, most of her friends, are going on almost 2 years post college job hunting now in South Korea - https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/07/17/SZTLLA...
And the running discussion over there is that Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics so they expect all their jobs to be replaced by either AI or Robots in the coming years.
unencumberednut
I had graduated in 1984 and the market had dried up significantly until 1985, then it was booming. But, that year I searched for employment (crickets) and getting engaged in eventual very high tech, it was a great time, and I look back fondly at the personal journey. I dug ditches, painted apartments, and advanced myself. And I still tell people out of school and searching, enjoy the time to be un-interrupted as you will get fully engaged at some point and find yourself busy for the next 40 years.
mmcromp
your assumption that everything will only get better and we're just having a momentary hiccup before windfall of bounty only shows your boomer ignorance.
SpaceNoodled
And they can just eat dried paint chips and sleep in the ditches!
butterlettuce
All of a sudden I don't hear the "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" folks anymore. Where did they go? Are they in the unemployment line, too?
herval
I know a dozen of those, and most of them are "starting their own company (stealth)" - aka they're unemployed for many months. It's all very weird (despite people saying "it's going to start improving" for 2 years now)
jamboca
in fact, they are. know many of these people and helping one of them get re hired right now. and you can be sure they never expected this to hit them!
bloqs
the Boomer retirement(or lack of) bomb is currently going off. This generation had quite a large cohort who experienced an economic "miracle" throughout their childhood, and developed a troublesome and largely unrealistic grasp of pay and quality of life level for expected labour. They were the generation of just showing up to work and a firm handshake was enough for automatic promotion over time.
monster_truck
It's real fuckin bad, folks.
Most everyone I know, at all skill levels, go hundreds of applications deep before finally landing a real interview let alone a job these days (in far more than just tech, too). Their unemployment runs out and they can't even get in as a bartender or at a gas station. I used to love helping people find jobs they want, my own way of paying it forward from the people who did that for me, now nothing seems to work.
I interview extremely well, until 2022 I typically got the job I wanted on the first try, they used to find me! Now direct referrals to CEOs or founders from investors or employees result in them ghosting. I've also paradoxically been told that I'm overqualified and should be applying for eng lead/principal/cto positions... and that I don't have enough experience to apply for those roles when I do.
I've just been stringing together small bullshit contracts to pay for vices in the meantime, halfway coasting off passive income. Vaguely it feels like something shitty is coming and it's being drawn out in an attempt to lessen the impact but it's being fucked up by everything else. Reminds me of shortly before 2008, when a lot of the people who knew they'd be getting laid off found out.
I really do not think it's offshoring, either. The crews I have contracted work out to in the past (Eastern Europe, South Korea, Japan) are asking me if I've got anything for them, they've never done that before.
mcherm
So, my son just graduated at the start of the summer with a dual degree in Math and Computer Science. He would like to find an entry level job in software engineering. Does anyone have any advice to give him?
trebligdivad
Look for startups connected to the university he graduated from.
Rover222
build personal projects incorporating AI (custom mcp servers, LLM integrations, etc), and reach out to people directly on LinkedIn who might be hiring.
anotherhue
Rapidly pivot to AI engineering
apwell23
try places like salt lake city, Charlotte NC
Havoc
Bit confused by the mentions of 50k and above salary but can’t afford to move out because rent is above a grand
Last I checked a year has 12 months so that should easily work no?
mixmastamyk
Why do these always/only talk about new graduates? My last contract ended, and I haven’t had a real interview in over a year.
kulahan
Because their unemployment rates specifically are catastrophic levels. I’ve seen reports as high as 19%. Fortunately, other demographics simply aren’t experiencing difficulties at this level.
As an aside, I personally noticed the market pick up hard in the last few weeks. I work in a niche industry, but get ads for software dev jobs regularly and they’ve really surged lately. The past year truly was a difficult time to find a job.
daemonologist
The fact that pretty much all new grads are having a more difficult time finding employment than in the past makes it harder to dismiss. If you write a story about 10% of experienced workers being un/underemployed, it's easy for readers to say "oh, that's just structural unemployment" or "they must not be that good at their job," even if someone paying attention to the numbers would know that it used to be 5% (or whatever).
anigbrowl
Because it's an easy to story they can run every summer - 'how are graduates doing in the job market? we asked 5 of them'.
techpineapple
I always find personal stories and quotes a weird way to tell these kinds of stories. Someone is always frustrated trying to find a job, right? Every field has ups and downs over time, and I know people whose fields were having a down turn in 2021 when tech was hotter than ever.
AI engineers aren’t in a slump I assume, nurses are classically understaffed right?
an0malous
> The national economic data backs up their experience. The unemployment rate among recent graduates has been increasing this year to an average of 5.3%, compared to around 4% for the labor force as a whole, making it one of the toughest job markets for recent graduates since 2015, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Friday.
fennec-posix
I think that's part of it, however it does seem the barrier to entry for anything now is a lot higher. People can argue what's causing that as they may, I cannot say for sure what causes it. Could be economic, could be cultural/procedural within corporates.
la64710
Offshoring … (not h1bs)
cherryteastain
> AI engineers aren’t in a slump I assume
It's in a slump if you are a junior. You see these stories about experienced guys getting ridiculous comp packages, but if you are fresh out of undergrad getting especially a researcher position at a top outfit is very difficult.
herval
We hear about a literal _dozen_ people getting those ridiculous packages. A dozen people versus hundreds of thousands on the unemployment line.
throwaway984393
[dead]
I know a lot of junior developers who just gave up on that industry over the last 2 years. It seems truly rough for them. But also that's comparing it to the general boom over the previous 10-15 years.
I have about 10 yrs experience, and just conducted my first job hunt in 5 years (I was with one company for a long time, then took a sabbatical for half a year after our dev team was off-shored). I was pretty concerned that it could take 6 months or more to find a gig. But I found myself interviewing with 6 or 7 companies within two weeks, and had 2 offers by the end of week 3 (I'm starting the new gig tomorrow). I consider myself a pretty average full-stack rails/react dev. I don't even bother applying to FANG (or whatever the acronym is now) jobs. So... I don't know if I just got lucky, but the job market felt pretty good when looking for senior roles. My interviews were a mix of referrals from previous coworkers, a couple recruiters reaching out, and (the job I accepted) from reaching out on LinkedIn to hiring managers posting jobs.
It feels like the AI wave is killing junior jobs, but driving demand for experienced developers to harness it, even if just harnessing it as a tool to speed up coding.