New graduates are having an especially tough time landing a job right now: The share of unemployed Americans that are new to the workforce is at a 37-year high.
Why it matters: It’s a sign of how reluctant companies have been to hire amid ongoing economic uncertainty over tariffs and policy.
By the numbers: 13.4% of unemployed Americans in July were “new labor force entrants,” those looking for jobs with no prior work experience, including new high school and college graduates.
It’s the highest number since 1988, as the Baby Boomer generation was flooding the job market.
In the minds of CEOs, people with no work experience perform jobs that can be replaced with AI.
Hard to tell if that’s true. What is certainly true is that without junior employees, there are not going to be senior employees forever. Of course, today’s CEO does not care about the problems of tomorrow’s company.
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Wait, why should we trust this data again?
Fair point. This administration has made clear that departments who accurately report unfavorable economic information are subject to firings and elimination.
That said, this particular data shows no evidence of manipulation.
That sucks, but this feels like a fairly recent spike in youth unemployment. Everything I’ve read until last year seems to indicate that Gen Z was seeing a better job market than Millennials.
Got zero sympathy for Gen Z as they gave majority support for TDTrump (TD means tiny dick).
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It’s even worse than that because, from one account, my grandparents said it didn’t used to be like this from their personal experience. That was way more than enough to be completely qualify in the past, and your purchasing power was much greater even if you’re not convinced on the qualification part. Purchasing power has been dropping for decades.
I think we should be asking ourselves how years of training and thousands of dollars ended up not being enough to get a job that can do more than buy avocado toast.
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OK, so say this year, every teen starts doing this 120 work/study week in the US. In 6 years, everyone coming out of school at 25 now has this suicidal, self-destructive work ethic. What will we find? I’ll tell you. We’ll find that the job market is still fucked.
You might be young, but you bit into the old man propaganda. It’s been decades since feasible career opportunities outnumbered the applicants. The market is flooded with overqualified candidates desperate for work and taking jobs with minimal growth opportunity. No, don’t tell me working the register at McDonald’s is an opportunity. The ratio of minimum wage entry level jobs is vastly disproportionate to the “growth” available in management. 40 burger flippers to 1 manager, over the time of their tenure, means the ladder is not stable for the majority of people. It’s not a ladder at all, the manager climbed a body pile.
Go to any place claiming teens don’t want to work anymore. They’re still in business, right? Because they have a workforce? Who’s working? A wide range of adults. Surely, they’re not taking a paycut to charitably keep McDonald’s in business. So then why are middle aged adults working entry jobs? I said it before: the job market is fucked. Asking why there’s fewer teens is the wrong question. Instead, ask why there’s apparently enough later adults ready to work these jobs. They’re not getting paid any better to do it.
So why is it fucked? Because America wasn’t super naturally great in the 1950s, it just had explosive industrial success because it was the only industrialized nation that wasn’t bombed in WWII. It filled the global void of production. Within 20 years, the other countries rebuilt their industries and retook their global market share. Germany, England, USSR, Japan - it’s no coincidence that the industrial giants were the ones with the production power to cause world-scale destruction in the first place. Sounds fine, that should just slow the US growth, not stop or reverse it. But the world didn’t stop there. Less-industrialized nations picked up production. The industrial giants outsourced to the cheap labor and looser regulations. China, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc. Look at the latest ramp-up of import tariffs. Americans are paying more and more to the US government to import foreign steel and it STILL is cheaper than anything domestic.
“Nobody wants to work anymore” Bullshit. Nobody ever wanted to work. We work because we have to. If we didn’t have to, we’d find more exciting puzzles to solve for fun, not be a corporate slave boosting earnings for C-level executives.
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Good lordy loo that’s sad
Ok seriously, what the fuck are you talking about? You’re just spouting random exposition and unfounded, uncited, and kinda obviously inaccurate opinions that makes me think you are suffering from a deep generational disconnect and lack of understanding. Which furthermore makes me assume that you’re likely a boomer talking out of your ass.
Nothing about your comment is insightful or helpful - much less accurate.
It’s the kids fault so it’s the parents faults so it’s their parents’ parents fault for not pushing their grandchildren to have 6 years of experience before graduating secondary school
