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Three to five years of experience for an entry-level job. Sitting through rounds of interviews only to ultimately get ghosted. Lengthy applications that seem to disappear into the void of LinkedIn or hiring-page portals. This is what young workers describe as the norm during their recent job searches, and it backs up what headlines have been saying: It’s hard to get a job these days.
Manika Dulcio, 27, who lives in Georgia, doesn’t have a college degree, but she does have nine years of work experience in customer service and three years of sales experience. She tells Teen Vogue about applying for a job in 2022, only to recently hear back from a recruiter, encouraging her to apply again. “It was the same position, same qualifications. They added more years [of experience] that they wanted for the person to fill the role," Dulcio says, "but they lowered the salary.”
Meanwhile 28-year-old Jane, from New York State, who asked to use a pseudonym because she’s actively looking for work, finished a three-year position in the late fall. Since then, she says, the search itself has “been mostly akin to a full-time job in terms of time commitment and volume of output.”
Jane keeps a job-application tracking spreadsheet; of 80 jobs she has applied for, she reports, she’s received just 8 responses. One ghosted her completely after four interview rounds. Says Jane, “I think another uncertainty is [not knowing] how long will I still get a callback before I'm eliminated [from consideration] on the basis of ‘She's been out of work for too long’?”
For some young workers, their entry into the full-time workforce coincided with the start of the COVID pandemic, which prompted changes and deepened inequities within the labor market. Some teens were essential workers throughout the pandemic after some businesses closed or switched to remote work, while other teens struggled to find work or their internships got canceled.
“Advice that I've gotten from adults on how to navigate the working sphere, especially outside of food service and customer service, doesn't really work anymore,” says Nia Pipkin-Glover, who lives in Oregon. In college, they recall being told that if they worked internships, they’d stand out among their peers who might be applying to jobs with only a college degree.
Pipkin-Glover had done internships, worked in food service, and later, in their first “white-collar job situation,” had significant wins. But now they feel their knowledge is questioned, in part because they say they lack a “more linear, ‘traditional’ life and working milestones.”
A report in Fortune laid out how some young people whose graduation or entry into the workforce coincided with the pandemic's start have struggled to establish a career base. “Sometimes it can be difficult for people to find that through-line of the fact that I know what I'm doing,” says Pipkin-Glover, because their resumé hasn’t followed the internship to assistant to associate trajectory. Meanwhile, when they’ve applied for positions in food service, they say, “people will not hire me because they're like, 'Oh, you're looking for an office job, so you're just gonna leave.'”
Why is it so bad out there?
More than 1.6 million of the 7 million Americans unemployed as of last November had been job hunting for at least six months, according to Labor Department statistics shared in the Wall Street Journal. February reporting from Business Insider said the availability of entry-level jobs is declining while experience requirements rise. That's making it harder for Gen Z candidates to find jobs, compounded by negative stereotypes about the generation's work ethic and millennial-age managers being pushed back into the hiring pool, according to the article.
Additionally, Fast Company cited the use of artificial intelligence to improve resumés and “layoff spillover” from the pandemic years, when companies over-hired, as other reasons it’s generally trickier for workers to land a job.
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Teen Vogue that, over the past few years, unemployment has been low and workers, particularly those who had less power in the labor market, have had a bit more leverage. Young and lower-wage workers have seen faster wage growth since 2019 than they saw in the roughly 40 years prior.
But under the Trump administration, there have been mass layoffs of federal government employees, the cancellation of funding and grant opportunities at universities, and possible price increases for basic items due to new tariffs on imported goods. “Now we enter a period of a little bit more economic insecurity,” Gould says.
Meanwhile, Gould notes, there’s less “churn” — workers aren’t quitting or switching jobs at the rates they were in recent years. She explains that, often, the best way to see faster wage growth is to get an outside option: Find a new job or get an offer and use it as leverage to negotiate a better salary. “But now there are a lot of workers staying put," she continues, "so those openings are not coming up for newer entrants to be able to get into those jobs.”
The wage levels many young people face are so low that it can be challenging to move out on one's own, buy a car, start a family, or pursue higher education. “So those struggles are real,” Gould says. In addition, a 2024 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that the unemployment and underemployment rates of Black, Hispanic, and AAPI young high school graduates are higher than their white peers.
Kyra Leigh Sutton, human resources expert in the Rutgers University–New Brunswick School of Management and Labor Relations, says return-to-office policies are a huge factor among the issues facing young workers. “We're asking a generation, some of whom strongly prefer asynchronous classes, people that have completed internships in hybrid or remote environments, and who also have a history of attending high school classes online, to come into the office,” she tells Teen Vogue via email. “I wouldn't say that companies are outwardly or strategically considering how to help early-career talent adjust to being in-person.” (Plus, for many workers, including those who are chronically ill or disabled, remote work is a matter of accessibility.)
Ashley Rudolph, an executive coach who founded the company Work With Ashley R, says layoffs have also impacted people responsible for recruiting, and there’s a market flooded with applicants. Many of these applicants are doing what had been, traditionally, all the right things: customizing resumés, finding opportunities on LinkedIn, specifically applying on company websites. Rudolph says she hears from HR leaders who receive more than 1,000 applicants in 48 hours, are sometimes themselves understaffed, and resort to not responding. “The system that existed and worked five years ago, that we've all been trained to go along with," she says, "it’s what we know is just not effective anymore.”
What do experts suggest?
Rudolph suggests adjusting the approach to networking. She thinks “people are less likely to want to hop on a random coffee meeting with someone that they don't know, but they're more willing to answer a specific question from someone who they can relate to.” That could look like identifying a place you might want to work, reaching out to someone on LinkedIn in a similar position you might be looking for, and building that relationship.
Rudolph also advises “making it really easy for HR and hiring managers to take action.” When you reach out, put all the pertinent information right in front of them, she says: You’re reaching out because you believe you’re the perfect fit for the role, you like what the company is doing, and here are three things you’ve done that map onto the job description, and include your resumé.
Sutton encourages those who are still in school to take advantage of career fairs and professional-development events hosted by their institution’s career services department. Sometimes she sees students who opt to search solo for jobs, who then overlook organizations that are coming to campus to connect with them.
“Finding a job where you like everything about the work — your manager, the culture, and your work schedule — is tough,” Sutton points out. “I think if students and early-career professionals prioritize the top five things they need to be successful and happy at work, they will experience less disappointment.”
In a tight labor market, she adds, you might have to settle for two or three priorities being satisfied: “Also, those five priorities are specific to each person and will change over time.”
It can be discouraging when advice that should work doesn’t, especially when it feels like being able to pay your bills hinges on who happens to skim your resumé. Being creative about what your options are, thinking about transferable skills, and building your network can all be helpful — and it’s okay to get frustrated with what can be an exhausting process. Some job seekers find this is important to talk about: “I think sometimes when you're navigating these really personal issues, like trying to find a job and not being able to be employed or find work," Pipkin-Glover says, "it feels super isolating, but other people are going through it.”
