Young men are struggling in a slowing job market, even if they have college degrees
Instead, two years after he graduated with a computer science bachelor's degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he's unemployed and living with his parents in the suburbs of Chicago. Despite having applied to more than 900 jobs — from secretary positions to a role at a prison — he has gotten only a handful of interviews.
'I want to be an adult,' he said. 'I need to lock in, I need to move forward, but right now, I'm just stunted. I'm trying my best, but I guess my best isn't good enough.'
Barcenas has found himself in a job market with fewer places for young men, according to economists and recent labor market data. Amid a wider slowdown in hiring, the unemployment rate for men ages 23 to 30 with bachelor's degrees has jumped in recent months to 6% — compared with 3.5% for young women with the same level of education, according to data analyzed by NBC News.
Now, young men with bachelor's degrees are slightly likelier to be unemployed than young men with just high school diplomas, the analysis found. That's a recent reversal after decades when young men with bachelor's degrees had an advantage in the labor market, economists said. Young women haven't experienced the same trend; they are still significantly likelier to be employed if they have bachelor's degrees.
The shift in employment prospects for men compared with women is tied partly to the changing dynamics of the labor market, in which much of the job growth has been driven by hiring in the health care and social services industry — in which nearly 80% of workers are female, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
'Essentially 100% of the labor force growth over recent months, maybe even a couple of years, has been coming from the health care industry, and that industry is overwhelmingly female,' said Emerson Sprick, director of retirement and labor policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit that brings together Democratic and Republican policymakers. 'While at the same time, you've seen these traditionally male blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, mining — those have been down or flat. So that's creating a lot more difficulties for men.'
Tech is among the traditionally male-dominated fields that have been hit particularly hard by layoffs in recent years. Around 132,000 tech industry workers have been laid off in 2025, on top of 238,000 in 2024, according to a tally from the tech job website TrueUp. At the same time, computer science-related tracks have been among the top majors for men graduating with bachelor's degrees in recent years, adding to the supply of workers amid shrinking demand from employers.
Barcenas did briefly get a full-time job with his computer science degree working as an engineer on brake systems for the auto company Stellantis. He moved to Michigan for the job last summer. But it ended after four months when his entire division was laid off. In the year since then, his only income has come from driving for Uber and doing some video editing projects on the side.
'I don't have a stable base right now. It's very rocky, and I'm not sure if I will make it, if the foundation will be good enough in the future or if it's going to topple over,' he said.
Across the economy, hiring by employers has been slowing, making it particularly challenging for younger workers trying to get their foot in the job market. The economy added just 73,000 jobs in July and fewer jobs than previously forecast in May and June, according to the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In manufacturing, a traditionally male-dominated industry, 11,000 jobs were lost last month.
President Donald Trump claimed this month that those numbers were 'rigged' to make him look bad and fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
'The Economy is BOOMING under 'TRUMP,'' he posted on Truth Social in announcing the firing.
But a booming economy isn't what some of those on the front lines of trying to find work have been experiencing.
'Every guy I know that is without a job right now wants to work, but they just can't get it,' said Eli McCullick, who has been looking for a job for more than a year after he graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder. 'It's demoralizing for guys who really want to get ahead and it's just not happening.'
McCullick, 23, said he hasn't even been able to get an hourly job at a restaurant or doing cleaning work at a hotel in the Boulder area, where he's living at a property his father owns. The only way he has been able to earn money to cover his food and daily expenses has been to do odd jobs for friends and relatives, like shoveling horse manure, mowing lawns and helping an older woman prepare for a yard sale.
After more than a year of looking for work, McCullick decided to pivot to law school, which he hopes to start next year, and he was able to use his personal connections to get a paid internship at a law firm this fall.
The struggle to find work has shifted his political views. He said he voted for Trump last year in hopes that a second Trump presidency would improve the economy and his chances of getting a job. Trump increased his support among younger men in the 2024 election, winning the vote among men under 30 by 1 percentage point over Democrat Kamala Harris, according to exit polls.
But McCullick said he now regrets that vote and fears Trump's policies around tariffs will raise prices and create economic uncertainty that slows hiring. He said he opposes the recent tax cut and spending bill passed in Congress, calling it 'totally antithetical to the idea of helping Americans' because of its cuts to food assistance and health insurance for lower-income households.
'I voted for him, but I'll tell you what, it wasn't because of immigration, it wasn't because of foreign policy; it was because I bought the big lie about prosperity and economic growth,' McCullick said. 'This was in '24 when I was struggling to get a job, and I really hoped that would make it better. But everything he's done since has done the exact opposite. So I feel disaffected, not only in the job market narrowly, but politically generally.'
Results from an NBC News Stay Tuned Poll, powered by SurveyMonkey, in April found 45% of young men approved of Trump's job performance, while only 24% of young women did. The approval among young men was similar to that among the overall population, though lower than among men in older age groups.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration aims to boost the economy by reducing regulations, cutting taxes and working on trade deals to increase American exports.
"President Trump's America First policies unleashed historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and this same policy mix — at an even bigger scale — is set to deliver again in President Trump's second term," Desai said.
The White House, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pointed to declines in unemployment since Trump took office for men of all ages without a college degree and for men ages 20 to 24 regardless of education. (NBC News' analysis looked at a different group: men ages 23 to 30 with a bachelor's degree and those with a high school degree.)
For decades, men's employment prospects have been deteriorating while women's have been on the rise. Since the 1990s, a greater share of women than men have been earning bachelor's degrees, with nearly half of women ages 25 to 34 holding bachelor's degrees as of last year, compared with just over a third of men, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Young men are likelier to be financially dependent on their parents compared with young women, with 74% of women describing themselves as mostly financially independent, compared with 62% of young men, according to a separate Pew survey released last year.
While men are still likelier to be in the workforce than women, men's participation — the percentage of men working or looking for work — has been declining for decades. Now, around 68% of all men are considered to be part of the labor force, down from 69% before the pandemic and 73% before the Great Recession.
Most men who aren't working or looking for work said in a survey that it was because of personal health issues — most likely the result of men's having more physically demanding jobs — while women's top reason was caring for children, according to Sprick, of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
'It's not a great time for young men to be not doing great in the labor market,' said Richard Reeves, founder and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, which researches and advocates for men's well-being. 'We've already had these long-term trends in higher education and earnings and geographical mobility that are already pretty troubling.'
Sean Breen, who graduated this spring with a communications degree from California State University, Long Beach, said he and nearly all of his high school friends, both men and women, are back home living with their parents and unemployed. He said even those who went to top-ranked colleges and got seemingly in-demand degrees are unable to find work.
'It is like a high school reunion,' Breen said. 'We're all, we are back in Marin County this summer, all unemployed, all trying to find a barista job, a part-time something, because we haven't found anything.'
After having applied to hundreds of jobs, he said, Breen now plans to go to graduate school in the fall at Trinity College in Ireland, where tuition is significantly lower and, he hopes, jobs will be more plentiful.
'I don't want a pity party, but it was so interesting to be in my position and look at all my other peers, as well, and be like, what happened?' Breen said. 'It didn't really matter what school or degree — it's just the current job market.'
The struggles vary by industry, and Reeves said he would like more programs to encourage men to go into health care and break down the gender stereotypes around certain career paths — similar to efforts to encourage women to go into construction.
'If health and social care really are where a lot of jobs are coming from and men aren't in them, we need similar policy responses,' Reeves said.
Barcenas, who graduated with a computer science degree, said he's open to other fields but would prefer to put this education to use. He worries about pivoting to another career in which he could ultimately be faced with the same uncertainty. For now, he doesn't know what the future holds.
'It does mess with me. I get very anxious,' he said. 'Is this how it's going to be when I'm 26, when I'm 27, when I'm 28?'
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