When Jenny Flora Wells graduated from Ohio State University with a master’s degree in social work in 2021, she applied to 400 jobs. Of those, she landed three interviews.
“I was told that an MSW was a sure ticket and that I would be guaranteed a job. I did everything by the book, had a 4.0 GPA, worked with career services, and quadruple-checked my resume. I did everything by the book and still couldn’t land a job,” Wells said.
Wells now helps other recent graduates who are traumatized by their job search. She is a licensed social worker who practices in Los Angeles. While looking for a job, Wells landed an internship with OSU’s career services department, which helped her specialize in the niche field of job counseling.
“What we’re seeing in 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 jobs,” Wells said.
What Wells experienced personally and sees professionally today – graduates disoriented and mentally exhausted by a cutthroat job market – is confirmed by labor analysts and academics.
A new fork in the road in a dynamic job market
“We’re seeing a kind of bifurcation in the labor market right now. Jobs that are available are often overwhelmingly filled by people without a bachelor’s degree,” said Rachel Sederberg, senior economist and research director at Lightcast, a labor market analysis firm.
“We hear this from students, but we also see the labor market data confirming it,” said Sederberg, who is also an assistant professor of economics at Stonehill College, adding that she sees student frustration firsthand.
For example, Lightcast data shows that job postings for bachelor’s degree holders with two or fewer years of experience from January-May 2023 to January-May 2024 saw little difference in the top occupations, industries, and skills in demand. However, there were 148,500 fewer job postings during that period in 2024 than in 2023.
For jobs that don’t require a degree, openings are up slightly from last year, from 65.75% of job openings in 2023 to 65.98% so far in 2024. However, according to Lightcast data, 8 of the top 10 job openings 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 have a tremendous experience trying to find a job,” Sederberg said, adding that there is strong demand in the trade, retail, hospitality and leisure sectors.
“Part of it is that we’ve come back to life after four years of Covid, and we’re seeing a lot of the baby boom generation aging out of the workforce, leaving a lot of jobs unfilled. The average age of people in the core occupations is pretty high, and we need to replace them; we can’t do without plumbers, for example,” Sederberg said.
Not a collapse in degree-related jobs, but a mismatch of candidates
According to Sederberg, what we are seeing now is a job market that is simply coming back down to earth for graduates, but not collapsing.
“We’re not in a weak job market at all; we’ve gotten used to the incredible strength and chaos of the last two years,” Sederberg said. She noted that some college freshmen have already landed jobs while they wait to graduate, as many companies ramped up hiring immediately after the pandemic.
Not only is there a divide between those with degrees and those without, but there is also a similar divide in the market for degree-related skills, with some jobs attracting dozens of applicants while others remain vacant, making competition for the jobs that young graduates want even more intense.
It’s a dynamic that Cindy Meis, director of undergraduate career services at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, also sees in what she describes as a fragmented and unequal job market. There are record numbers 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.
“The jobs available don’t always match the wants and needs of candidates. There is a mismatch between the needs and the talent pool,” Meis said.
This means that some jobs receive an avalanche of applications while other job application inboxes remain empty.
There are plenty of candidates for marketing jobs, “but accounting grads? We can’t produce them fast enough,” Meis said. She added that most recent grads have different experiences they’re trying to have outside of work than their slightly older counterparts. New grads want to return to the office, while older workers are more open to continuing to work from home as they did during the pandemic.
Don’t count on the university to make a difference
“Employers are keenly aware that nontraditional pathways into the workforce, not just college degrees, provide people with the skills and experiences needed to qualify for many jobs,” said Christina Schelling, Verizon’s chief talent and diversity officer, who oversees the company’s inbound talent pipeline.
Schelling says the job market for graduates in 2024 is strong, but focusing solely on earning a degree is a mistake. About 99% of Verizon’s more than 100,000 jobs don’t require a college degree. She added that soft skills, like collaboration, critical thinking and empathy, are more important than ever.
“It’s easier to teach someone a technical skill than it is to teach them resilience and creative problem-solving,” Schelling said. “That’s why candidates should emphasize their desire to continually improve and their intellectual curiosity during interviews. Great companies, now more than ever, are investing in their employees and are committed to developing their skills.”
Some labor market experts point to onerous application requirements as one underlying factor undermining an already tough job market for graduates.
“The recruiting 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 positions in finance and accounting.
Marcus says new graduates don’t have the patience or time to laboriously go through some of the extra steps required to work with applicant tracking systems that require uploading a resume and manually filling out questions. Marcus adds that everyone—employers and graduates alike—is more demanding. Companies are more demanding and require experience even for “entry-level” positions.
“It certainly depends on the industry, but many ‘white collar’ jobs are increasing their requirements due to an abundance of candidates,” Marcus said.
Ultimately, a graduate’s job prospects vary depending on where they are, what they are applying for, and what they want. A single unemployment number no longer tells the same thing.
“Unemployment trends are very sector-specific, geographic-specific and tier-specific,” Marcus said.
Meanwhile, Wells sees a lot of mental health anxiety among her clients, who expected a path to prosperity after graduation.
“Everyone tells you that if you go to college, get a master’s degree and specialize, you’re going to be successful and you’re going to be able to have a comfortable life and live the American dream, but what I’m finding is it’s a lot more complex than that,” Wells said. “In 2024, the job market is going to change dramatically.”