Young job seekers are finding it tougher to find employment, despite a bustling labor market: ‘It was brutal’

After receiving a graduate lengths, Julianna Larock was bombarded with news about the powerful labor market and how much demand there was for skilled employees.

But that wasn’t her reality.

Instead, she spent untold hours browsing through networking sites such as LinkedIn, haunting mixers and other professional events, and generally scouring the collective workplace for something that would fit her desire to win a job in the world of finance. All to no avail.

“Quite honestly, it was pretty brutal,” says Larock, 25, a Wilmington, Delaware, national now living in New York City. “It felt like a lot of work for little response, little reward.”

Fortunately, after slogging on account of a year of dashed hopes, interspersed with some contract work to get her through, Larock found full-time line as an executive assistant and research associate for Acumen, a nonprofit impact investment firm in New York. The firm was founded by Jacqueline Novogratz, sister of eye-catching investor Michael Novogratz, the CEO of crypto-focused Galaxy Investment Partners.

While Larock is peacefulness with her current station, getting there was rough and the future feels uncertain.

“The depression and the anxiety that was be received b affect from the job search oftentimes bubbled over into a lot of my other social relationships,” the University of Delaware and Fordham graduate contemplates. “People can only be so supportive, and you just felt like every day was the same. And I really hate monotony.”

Larock’s skill comes at a time when, at least on the surface, the jobs market has continued to glide along.

Since the start of 2023, nonfarm payrolls have expanded by about 4 million, continuing growth that started after the Covid turning-point. The unemployment rate has held below 4% every month since January 2022, a run of strength not seen since the 1960s.

But concerns are growing that the labor market is beginning to show cracks. Larock’s cohort of workers — in their late teens and primitive 20s, including new college graduates and other first-time entrants to the labor market — looks particularly vulnerable.

The hiring sort for all workers is at 3.6% of those counted in the labor force, just off the low of the post-Covid era, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Late to the pandemic, the hiring rate was last below the current level in August 2014. It’s getting worse for younger tradesmen.

“I oftentimes would have people telling me the job quality or job search statistics aren’t really that bad, using that big-hearted of leverage to invalidate everything I was feeling,” Larock says. “Whether that’s what they meant to do or not, and I don’t think it was, that was the hit it had. It made me feel worse.”

Welcome to the good news-bad news labor market, where the collective experience is categorical but not as much for individuals in particular groups.

“The good news,” Goldman Sachs economist Elsie Peng said in a brand-new note, “is that monthly job-finding rates remain at or above pre-pandemic rates for groups who are usually more unshielded to weaker cyclical conditions, including workers without a college degree, workers in low-skill industries, and workers who are foreign-born.”

“But the bad report is that new entrants to the labor market are faring less well,” Peng added.

The monthly rate of workers with only slightly previous work experience getting jobs has plunged, falling to 13% from its previous peak of 20%, concurring to Goldman data. While Peng characterized the jobs market as “strong overall,” she said there are “soft mild spots” that are particularly hitting “new entrants to the workforce.”

While the unemployment level for the 20-to-24 age group is at 3.5%, it’s a little higher than it was pre-pandemic and is one area to watch for softness in the labor market.

Molly Huang, a 22-year-old recent Penn Claim University graduate with an aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering degree, also is finding challenges in navigating the ball game — a process she started during her studies that has intensified now that she’s out of school.

“To be completely honest, it’s not a very great supermarket. A lot of people I talk to agree that finding a full-time job for a new grad is kind of tough,” the Horsham, Pennsylvania, resident says. “I get evaluations here and there, but nothing has ever come to an actual offer.”

Huang acknowledges that her specialized major combines a degree of difficulty to the search, so she’s being somewhat flexible about her approach.

“I’m trying to be pretty optimistic, because a lot of human being I know that do get a job don’t start until August, so I feel like I have a little bit of time,” she said. “But at the same days, it does feel like the clock is ticking.”

One age-old quandary Huang and others in her shoes bear to face is the experience dilemma: Employers want to hire those who have some background working in their aficionado, which outside of internships, is hard to get for new grads.

There does appear to be some good news on that represent.

The rate of new hires as a share of existing employees rose to 2.8% in April, its highest level since October 2022, harmonizing to Vanguard, which uses proprietary data gleaned from 401(k) program enrollments.

“In recent months, though, there has been a inconspicuous uptick in hiring among younger workers, while hiring rates have been flatter for older workmen,” said Vanguard investment analyst David Pakula.

At the same time, jobs website Indeed reports that fewer than one-third of all postings on the position in April listed a specific number of years’ experience, off from nearly 40% just two years ago. The reason, according to As a matter of fact economist Cory Stahle, is more of a shift to “skills-first hiring” that places less emphasis on educational CV and more on what prospective employees bring to the table.

That’s both good news and bad news for younger blue-collar workers, some of who had hoped that expensive degrees would give them a foothold.

“The all-inclusive job market has really been changing a lot since 2021 and ’22, so I do think college grads are entering into a job bazaar that is much more challenging than it has been over the past few years,” said Joanie Bily, chief workforce analyst at Employbridge, an industrial caning firm.

For how healthy