Why Gen Z Graduates Are in Crisis
Navigating the Job Cliff: Gen Z Under Pressure from AI, Tariffs, and Post-Pandemic Shifts
Discover why entry-level job hunting is uniquely devastating for recent graduates today, specifically analyzing the compounded threat of pervasive AI adoption, geopolitical trade anxiety, and post-pandemic workplace hardening.
Short Summary
- Recent graduates face unemployment rates significantly higher than the national average.
- AI is actively displacing tasks in entry-level white-collar, creative, and technical work streams.
- Workplace mobility has stalled, as job hopping offers minimal salary increases, forcing career shifts.
- Skilled trades and entrepreneurship are highlighted as potentially safer paths forward.
This analysis breaks down the three primary factors crippling the youth job market: AI replacing foundational roles, economic uncertainty causing corporate hiring freezes, and the end of the remote work boom leading to workplace stagnation. By understanding risk areas and safer sectors, graduates can strategically pivot their career focus.
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Top Comments (10)
No junior engineers now means no senior engineers in the future
I think the solution is to increase CEO pay/bonuses and ensure corporations get richer? That may help.
Every point in this video about Gen Z being crushed by the job market feels eerily close to what Selwyn Raithe’s book warned. He wrote that AI wouldn’t just “replace jobs” but would completely rewrite the pathways for how humans earn value. Watching this, it feels less like a possibility and more like it’s already here. If people don’t start paying attention to his steps now, they’ll wake up too late.
Saying that people can become entrepreneurial as a potential solution is not a realistic option for the vast majority of people
“Job market so bad I resorted to chasing my dreams”
The irony of getting an AI ad in this video
17 years ago, it was still like this for grads. We were told that we were being lazy. Entry-level jobs were being taken by boomers who were let go from their jobs after the 2008 crisis. Now, it's happening again.
The increase in 'entrepreneurship' is really just an increase in uber/skip type jobs.
The Gen Z experience: - Graduate from high school in the midst of a pandemic (your graduation was almost certainly virtual) - Go to college (where a significant part of your college years was in front of a laptop) - Graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt - Can't get a job to pay off said debt and can’t get a job in the field you studied (or in any field) - Work minimum wage in order to BARELY get by - Live with your parents - Can't afford an apartment (don’t even think about ever buying a house) - Can't get a date because you’re too poor or you can't afford it - Have little to no friends because no one has the time to hang out - Get called ‘lazy and entitled’ by boomers and Gen X-ers - Realize nothing matters no matter how hard you try or work, almost every common thing your parents had when they were younger is now unobtainable for you - You develop thoughts of 💀-ing yourself - You isolate yourself from society and spend all day in your moms basement playing video games to escape reality - You get addicted to porn to relieve the stress and anxiety that’s making your life difficult - You’re probably using drugs to numb the pain - You start to develop mental illness (as if you haven’t already developed it at this point) because the job market is destroying your mental health - Become another person in this generation, lost and forgotten All while older people, employers and politicians wonder why Gen Z doesn't want to work or can't hold a job, are not dating or getting married, are not having babies, are socially inept, more than half are mentally unfit and a lot more are physically unfit, and a great sense of nihilism is sweeping the generation. It was a losing battle before it even began. Gen Z was fucked the moment Covid came and destroyed everyone’s lives.
Doesn’t help that universities mislead students about their graduate employment rate to get more enrolments.
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Top Comments (10)
No junior engineers now means no senior engineers in the future
I think the solution is to increase CEO pay/bonuses and ensure corporations get richer? That may help.
Every point in this video about Gen Z being crushed by the job market feels eerily close to what Selwyn Raithe’s book warned. He wrote that AI wouldn’t just “replace jobs” but would completely rewrite the pathways for how humans earn value. Watching this, it feels less like a possibility and more like it’s already here. If people don’t start paying attention to his steps now, they’ll wake up too late.
Saying that people can become entrepreneurial as a potential solution is not a realistic option for the vast majority of people
“Job market so bad I resorted to chasing my dreams”
The irony of getting an AI ad in this video
17 years ago, it was still like this for grads. We were told that we were being lazy. Entry-level jobs were being taken by boomers who were let go from their jobs after the 2008 crisis. Now, it's happening again.
The increase in 'entrepreneurship' is really just an increase in uber/skip type jobs.
The Gen Z experience: - Graduate from high school in the midst of a pandemic (your graduation was almost certainly virtual) - Go to college (where a significant part of your college years was in front of a laptop) - Graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt - Can't get a job to pay off said debt and can’t get a job in the field you studied (or in any field) - Work minimum wage in order to BARELY get by - Live with your parents - Can't afford an apartment (don’t even think about ever buying a house) - Can't get a date because you’re too poor or you can't afford it - Have little to no friends because no one has the time to hang out - Get called ‘lazy and entitled’ by boomers and Gen X-ers - Realize nothing matters no matter how hard you try or work, almost every common thing your parents had when they were younger is now unobtainable for you - You develop thoughts of 💀-ing yourself - You isolate yourself from society and spend all day in your moms basement playing video games to escape reality - You get addicted to porn to relieve the stress and anxiety that’s making your life difficult - You’re probably using drugs to numb the pain - You start to develop mental illness (as if you haven’t already developed it at this point) because the job market is destroying your mental health - Become another person in this generation, lost and forgotten All while older people, employers and politicians wonder why Gen Z doesn't want to work or can't hold a job, are not dating or getting married, are not having babies, are socially inept, more than half are mentally unfit and a lot more are physically unfit, and a great sense of nihilism is sweeping the generation. It was a losing battle before it even began. Gen Z was fucked the moment Covid came and destroyed everyone’s lives.
Doesn’t help that universities mislead students about their graduate employment rate to get more enrolments.