Gen Z Faces a Tough Labor Market

New college graduates are seeking jobs in the middle of a renaissance of the working man. While the market for college graduates might be weaker, there’s quite a strong market for trades workers.

Forty-one percent of the construction industry will retire before 2031, and the resulting scarcity will produce untoward wages for new workers. A union carpenter in the Midwest can expect to be compensated around $55 an hour once he becomes a journeyman. This is significantly higher than the $28 an hour I will make as a public defender when I leave law school.

I worked construction before and during college, and I do not believe I am above manual work. But the facts are nonetheless remarkable. The median starting salary of those with a bachelor’s degree is generally around $55,000. That is more or less what you would make the second you step into the union. By the time you’re a journeyman, you would make nearly six figures—far more than your peers with bachelor’s degrees. The job market isn’t weak. The privileged class surrounding our nation’s universities is weak. Shuffle down to the union hall, preppy.

—Zacheray Womer, Denison University, psychology

Nowhere to Go but Up

With the Covid pandemic, opportunities disappeared for the kind of part-time employment and internships that undergraduates were once able to have to build their résumés. We finish college now with a diploma in hand, but lacking the real-world experience and credentials for which employers look.

Graduates in the coming years should prepare to compete for jobs with older, more experienced postgraduates. In all the craziness of the past few years, it was easy to lose sight of the basics—but we need to return to those basics.

Employers love to see experience and initiative. Students should take up internships in fields that interest them. They should seek out opportunities for temporary and part-time jobs at companies that can help them network. They should hammer out proper résumés on such websites as LinkedIn or

ZipRecruiter.

When opportunity returns––and it will––students will need to be ready for it.

—Nathan Biller, Colgate University, history and political science

The New Graduate Gamble

I am graduating in less than a month, and in the current macroeconomic environment, the job market has been noticeably challenging. Though unemployment may be low, the current job market is not suited to new graduates. From what I have observed, the hot job market is mostly for minimum-wage or blue-collar positions. With so many white-collar workers out there, why would companies gamble on a new grad with limited experience?

I applied to nearly 30 jobs this year and that seems a pretty low number when I hear about what my peers are doing. I was networking, reaching out to recruiters directly, and continually reviewing my résumé and my LinkedIn and ePortfolio profiles. And after all this, I was lucky to receive direct rejections from seven employers, got interviews from two, and was ignored by the rest.

I am actually lucky because I was eventually offered a job at a startup. I have a job lined up, but I am not at all confident that I could simply get another one if this one doesn’t work out. And while accepting the offer, I felt I had very little room to negotiate my starting salary. I hope I like this job, because I do not think there is a market for me anywhere else.

—Andrew Conner, Biola University, business administration

What Happened to Following Your Passion?

Students these days prioritize financial stability when they think about their educations. This, they say, is due to the decrease in new hires by companies in almost every white-collar industry.

But the need to prioritize finances isn’t something students thought up for themselves. They have been taught both in high school and in college that the most important thing is learning to face reality. This emphasis is on practicality, encouraging students to pursue degrees that are statistically more stable in economic terms. This influence from educational organizations ends up having a negative impact on the dynamic selection processes that companies apply and, therefore, a negative impact on the market itself.

Instead of teaching students how to avoid failure, schools should be encouraging students to follow their passions, which would have a positive impact on the students—and help both the job market and society as a whole.

—Pedro Ribes Bujaldon, New York University, project management

Law Isn’t Doing Great

Things are no better for law students than for college students. The post-Covid hiring boom is over, and the legal profession has been hurt. Those who thought that going to law school would be a sure path to a job are now discovering how wrong they were.

The volume of legal work closely follows the ups and downs of the economy. In 2021 legal work exploded as the economy bounced back from the Covid-induced recession, with new demand for lawyers in mergers-and-acquisitions, tax and corporate law. This boom largely ended when rate hikes began at the Federal Reserve. Billable hours at law firms across America fell by 0.8% on average in 2022, while operating expenses increased by 12.4%, according to a report by the Wells Fargo Legal Specialty Group. Many firms still make a profit, but it is much smaller than expected and too narrow for comfort.

The result? Layoffs. Recent graduates, hired as associates during Covid, are fast losing their jobs. Meanwhile, for law students about to graduate, recruitment is narrowing and callback offers after summer associateships are few. Clerking with judges and public-interest law are becoming more popular as graduates try to wait out the next recession before seeking better-paid Big Law jobs, again.

—Arjun Singh, The George Washington University, law

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