When Jenny Flora Wells graduated from Ohio State University in 2021 with her master’s degree in social work, she applied for 400 jobs. Of those, she landed three interviews.
“I was told that an MSW degree was a perfect fit and that I would definitely find a job. I did everything by the book, got a 4.0 GPA, worked with career services, and revised my resume four times. I did everything by the book and still couldn’t find a job,” Wells said.
Wells now helps other recent graduates traumatized by their job search. She is a licensed social worker who practices in Los Angeles. While looking for work, Wells landed an internship in OSU’s career services department, which helped her develop a specialty in the field of job counseling.
“What we’re seeing from these younger generations is that they’re working harder than ever but they have nothing to show for it because no one is giving them work,” Wells said.
What Wells experienced personally and now sees professionally – graduates confused and mentally exhausted by the relentless job market – is confirmed by labor analysts and academics.
A new fork in a strong labor market
“What we’re experiencing now is a kind of bifurcation of the labor market. The jobs that need to be filled tend to be very concentrated among those without a college degree,” said Rachel Sederberg, a senior economist and research director at the labor analysis firm Lightcast.
“We’re hearing this from students, but we’re also seeing labor market data that supports it,” said Sederberg, who is also an adjunct professor of economics at Stonehill College, adding that she sees students’ frustration firsthand.
For example, Lightcast data shows that job openings for graduates with two years or less experience between January and May 2023 and January and May 2024 showed little difference in top occupations, industries, and in-demand skills. However, there were 148,500 fewer job openings in that period for 2024 than in 2023.
For jobs that don’t require a college degree, openings are up slightly from last year, from 65.75% of postings in 2023 to 65.98% so far in 2024. However, according to Lightcast data, 8 of the top 10 job postings in March were those that didn’t require a college degree.
“For jobs that don’t require a degree, we don’t have enough workers, and they’re having a lot of experience trying to find work,” Sederberg says, adding that there’s strong demand in the trades, retail, hospitality and leisure industries.
“That’s partly because we’re getting back to our lives after four years of COVID, and we’re seeing a lot of baby boomers leaving the workforce, leaving a lot of job openings. The average age of those working in the core trades is quite high, and we need to fill vacancies — we can’t afford to let go of plumbers, for example,” Sederberg said.
It was not an accident at work due to a lack of qualifications, but rather a lack of agreement between candidates
Part of what Sederberg says we’re seeing is a job market that’s just getting back to normal for graduates, but not a collapse.
“We’re not in a weak labor market by any means; we’ve gotten used to the incredible strength and chaos of the last two years,” Sederberg said. She noted that there were college juniors who had already landed a job while waiting to finish their degree because many companies ramped up hiring immediately after the pandemic.
Not only is there a bifurcation between those with degrees and those without, but there is also a similar chasm in the skills market for graduates, with some jobs attracting scores of applicants while others remain vacant, making competition for the jobs new graduates want even more intense.
Cindy Meis, director of undergraduate career services at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, says she’s also seeing that dynamic in what she described as a fragmented and uneven labor market. There are a record number of job postings on the platforms her office uses to help graduates connect with potential employers, such as Handshake, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“Available jobs don’t always align with candidates’ wants and needs. There’s a mismatch between needs and the talent pool,” Meis said.
This means that some jobs receive a flood of applications while other inboxes remain empty.
There are plenty of job applicants in the marketing field, “but accounting degrees? We can’t produce those fast enough,” Meis said. She added that most recent graduates have different experiences they’re trying to gain outside of work than their slightly older counterparts. Recent graduates want to return to the office, while older workers are more open to maintaining home office work in the pandemic era.
Don’t rely too much on college as a deciding factor
“Employers are keenly aware that nontraditional pathways to the workforce — not just college degrees — provide people with the skills and experiences to qualify for many jobs,” said Christina Schelling, Verizon’s chief talent and diversity officer, who oversees the company’s incoming talent pipeline.
Schelling says the job market for graduates in 2024 is strong, but focusing too much on degree completion alone is a mistake. About 99% of Verizon’s more than 100,000 jobs don’t require a college degree. He added that soft skills, such as collaboration, critical thinking and empathy, are more important than ever.
“It’s easier to teach someone a technical skill than to be resilient and find creative solutions to problems,” Schelling says. “That’s why, in interviews, candidates should highlight their desire for continuous growth and their intellectual curiosity. Great companies, now more than ever, are investing in their employees and are committed to skills development.”
Some labour market experts say onerous application requirements are among the underlying currents roiling an already tough job market for graduates.
“The hiring process is broken,” said Justin Marcus, co-founder and CEO of Big 4 Talent, which matches college graduates with some of the hardest-to-fill jobs in finance and accounting.
Marcus says recent graduates don’t have the patience or time to laboriously jump through some of the extra hoops required to work with applicant tracking systems that require uploading a resume and manually filling out questions. Marcus also says everyone — employers and graduates — is more demanding. Companies are more demanding, requiring experience even for “entry-level” positions.
“It certainly depends on the vertical, but many white-collar jobs are increasing their requirements due to the large number of applicants,” Marcus said.
In the end, he says, a graduate’s prospects in the job market vary depending on where they are, what they are applying for and what they want. A single unemployment figure no longer tells the same story.
“Unemployment trends are very sector-, geographically- and level-specific,” Marcus said.
Meanwhile, Wells encounters a lot of mental health distress among her clients, who expected an easy path to prosperity after earning their degrees.
“Everyone told you that if you went to college, got a master’s degree and specialized in something, you would be successful and could have a comfortable life and live the American dream, but what I’m finding is that it’s much more complex than that,” Wells said. “In 2024, the job market is changing dramatically.”
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