When Ashley Terrell graduated from the University of Hawaii in 2024, she planned to find a job in marketing, maybe for a tech company. She had a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a college résumé that included a student marketing job for Red Bull. But after months of applying, her only offer was to work in the power tools section at Home Depot. “It was quite a shock,” she told the Guardian. “I searched for jobs every single day in that Home Depot bathroom.”
Terrell’s generation is entering the workforce in a particularly unlucky moment. Hiring in the United States has slumped to its lowest rate since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While workers of all ages are feeling the pressure of an uncertain economy, it’s gen Z who is the most pessimistic about their job prospects: entry-level jobs are the most vulnerable to impacts from artificial intelligence, and some younger workers are seeing their careers stall before they have even started. Terrell felt she was not just competing with other people for jobs. “Especially with marketing, a lot of people think it can be replaced with AI,” she said.
The unemployment rate for Americans between 22 and 27 is now at its highest level since the pandemic. “The job market is really sluggish right now,” said Daniel Zhao, the chief economist at Glassdoor, a workplace review company. “Entry-level workers are finding it difficult right now to get their foot on the ladder at all.”
For many young would-be workers, that has translated into taking jobs they never imagined after earning a four-year degree: retail work, dog walking or other part-time jobs without benefits. Some have remained unemployed months or years after graduating.
Others are taking a different approach: when no jobs exist, they’re creating their own.
Terrell, who started a YouTube channel as a student, decided to build a marketing portfolio by making videos for brands. She started by direct messaging companies she liked and offering to make them content – sometimes for free. Eventually, Jamba Juice bought a video she had made to use as an Instagram and TikTok ad. Two years later, armed with a portfolio of videos like it, Terrell parlayed her experience into a part-time marketing role for a local distillery. Along the way, she built a roster of clients she continues to works with on branded content.
“No one was offering me anything like what I wanted to do,” said Terrell. “So I just tried to see what I could do on my own.”
The Guardian interviewed more than a dozen young workers who feel, like Terrell, that the rules for finding a job changed just as they were entering the workforce. As the number of entry-level job postings have gone down in recent years, the expectations for early-career workers have gone up. For a generation that wants more purpose, more flexibility and more alignment with their work, the recent job market has felt disenchanting.
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