College graduates are anxious about entering a rocky job market

Axios

25-05-2025

The Class of 2025 is begrudgingly entering a job market that is not welcoming them with open arms.
Why it matters: New grads are pessimistic entering the workforce, as the economy could slow. History shows that people who started their careers during economic downturns struggle throughout their lives.
"I'm excited to graduate and I worked really hard and I've loved these four years of college, but it does make me wish that I had more security," said Emma Crump, a senior studying sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Crump, 22, is enrolled in a class where she has to apply for three jobs weekly. She's heard back from three, and all were rejections.
Zoom out: "It's a little paradoxical, where for the last several years there was this talent shortage, so candidates have this power," Lindsey Zuloaga, chief data scientist for Utah-based hiring platform HireVue, said.
"But it's shifted in some ways and not others. Because of economic uncertainty, there's a lot less moving around happening, and that's tightening things up."
State of play: American pessimism about a looming U.S. recession is high, even if the economy doesn't reach that point.
Historical data shows that graduating into a recession can have lasting negative effects on salaries and health.
Graduating into economic turmoil is nothing new for Gen Z. The pandemic upended post-grad plans for the classes of 2020 and 2021.
Case in point: Sohan Bhakta, a computer science senior at the University of Arizona, applied to more than 600 jobs during the school year, with few interviews.
"The talk was, you'd be guaranteed a gig," Bhakta, 22, said. "And I don't know why I expected that. From this world, you should never expect anything because anything can change."
If he doesn't land a computer science role at the end of his six-month internship in September, he's considering pivoting to data engineering or data analytics to work more closely with AI.
Sabrina Valencia, 30, pivoted her human resources job hunt from full-time roles to internships after applying for about 70 jobs to no avail.
"I didn't realize how hard it was going to be just to get into even an entry level at that point," said Valencia, who graduated from Western Governors University in April. She's also exploring an extra certification.
Driving the news: More than half of current college seniors are pessimistic about the job market, per an April report from Handshake, an entry-level job platform.
As of March, the average class of 2025 student had submitted 21% more job applications on the platform than their 2024 counterparts.
That upswing "reflects heightened anxiety and urgency around the early-career job search, while simultaneously contributing to increased competition for jobs," the report said.
Threat level: Young adults who enter the workforce during recessions have historically had lower long-term earnings, higher rates of disability, fewer marriages, less successful spouses and fewer children, according to a 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research report.
In middle age, they have had higher mortality caused by lung, liver and heart disease.
"The bad luck of leaving school during hard times can lead to higher rates of early death and permanent differences in life circumstances," a 2019 Stanford report said.