Gen Z's Job Hunt Crisis: AI, Tariffs, and the Vanishing Entry-Level Dream

Gen Z is desperate for work. Battered by artificial intelligence, employers worried about tariffs, and hamstrung by a lack of job and internship experience, many college graduates are fighting to secure jobs even as rents remain high and sizeable college debt payments loom.

The number of job listings for the entry-level corporate jobs traditionally available to young college graduates has fallen 15% even as the number of applications for each job has accelerated 30%, according to the career platform Handshake. For the first time on record, joblessness among the highly educated has climbed above the overall unemployment rate, the Financial Times reports.

Many graduates, living at home while applying madly to online jobs, never hear back from their targeted employers, leaving them continually retooling their resumes and cover letters.

"80% of the time, I don’t hear back," said Maeve Stone, 22, a recent college graduate from West Hartford.

For others, like Kayleen Yacyk, who graduated from the University of Connecticut in May, it's worse. She estimated she has applied for more than 150 jobs without even a single returned phone call.

"You spend all these four years learning and being prepared to enter the world, and now I don't have anything to show for it," Yacyk said. "I have a lot of friends in the same boat."

A survey released this month found that nearly one in four Gen Z workers regret attending college. The survey, by Resume Genius, found 23% regret going to college and 13% would’ve chosen a skilled trade or no-degree career. The feeling is particularly acute for men, with 28% expressing regret.

The labor market for recent college graduates “deteriorated noticeably,” dipping to 5.3% in the second quarter of 2025, with the underemployment rate for college grads at more than 41%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That's the highest reading since 2021. Among those who graduated last year, 58% are still looking for their first job, according to Kickresume.

“AI is taking away some of these entry-level jobs,” said Kelly W. Kennedy, director of transformative learning and career education at UConn. "When they take the entry-level jobs away, they are taking away the steppingstones. What is that doing? It means the next level of job is going to require more skills and more degrees.”

Waterbury job coach Valerie Martinelli agreed.

"They are getting boxed out," she said of recent college graduates seeking work. "The job descriptions are almost that of a mid-career rather than an entry-level position. (Employers) feel they can get so specific in their job applications, requiring people to know this exact thing. They are not looking for the person who knows enough to learn. They are looking for this perfect unicorn that knows how to do absolutely everything."

That leaves a younger generation, already grappling with more debt and more mental health challenges than previous generations, frustrated, dejected and confused.

"The job descriptions are not written for a recent grad," Kennedy said. "They are written for an ideal candidate. So you have risk-averse Gen Z who won’t apply because they don’t understand the job function. They get personally offended if they get rejected and I say it’s not personal, it’s AI."

Yacyk, a marketing major who returned home to Pennington, N.J., after college, said, "At this point, we all expected to have jobs."

She now works as a server at a country club, despite looking for a professional position since October 2024.

"I just hope they see potential and give me a chance, but clearly that has not been the case for me," Yacyk said. "Everyone is applying for jobs, even people who graduated last year."

Still, Yacyk is more fortunate than most. She graduated without college debt. About 30% to 40% of students take out loans to pay for college, with the average student loan an estimated $536 a month, according to Education Data Initiative. Most college graduates must begin paying those loans within six months of obtaining their degree. But many college graduates, even those with coveted internships, are not even getting replies to applications.

Fred V. Carstensen, a UConn professor of finance and economics director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, said he believes continued uncertainty over tariffs, coupled with more than 125,000 federal layoffs that have saturated the job pool with skilled professionals, has made companies cautious about hiring.

"They want to fill in (positions), but they don't want to fill in with neophytes," he said. "They want someone who already has the skills established. Part of what you're doing when you are hiring young people is, you don't know what their strengths are, and right now, given all the uncertainty, they're saying, 'Let's just be cautious because we just don't know.'"

Now, those cut from federal positions will be tough competition for new grads.

"You have very experienced people who are leaving the federal government," Carstensen said. "Look at all the lawyers who have been sacked. These are good attorneys. Everybody's going to have a hard time. If you're freshly minted, you're going to be facing a very, very hard time. And for the next few years."

Carstensen said he anticipates four years of uncertainty.

As a generation, Gen Zers tend to be risk-averse largely because social media can so swiftly expose a gaffe, Kennedy noted.

“They’ll say, ‘Do I have to call?’ a connection,” she said. “They don’t like to look foolish. They are uncomfortable with the human connection because it leaves them in a vulnerable space.”

At the same time, they crave authenticity and “they want meaningful work,” Kennedy said, which can be at odds with an ecosystem increasingly dependent on AI to screen job candidates.

The challenges for Gen Z come from without and within, Kennedy said. Many grads in their early 20s, hampered by a lack of job or internship experience because many of those opportunities were shut down during the pandemic, have a romanticized vision of what work is, and often are unable to match their values and skills to jobs.

“They are thinking about these jobs like they’re dream jobs. There are no dream jobs,” she said.

Stone, who graduated from Skidmore College in May, said, "I honestly thought that things were just going to fall into place. I’ve had two internships so I feel like the natural progression should be to get a full-time position."

A management and business major, Stone completed an internship with Global Atlantic last year.

"I just feel frustrated. And I was trying all year. Just give me a chance. I know myself and I know I’m a hard worker. I’m motivated. I’m creative and determined. I think if I was given a chance, I could really perform," she said.

Part of the difficulty is the job-search process itself, which has been upended by applicant-tracking systems and AI.

"It is a whole new ball game with the job search," said Barbara Zerillo, director of the Center for Career and Professional Development at Post University in Waterbury. "Resumes are getting scanned by AI or an applicant-tracking system before any human eyes see it."

Kennedy said many candidates simply prompt ChatGPT to create resumes and cover letters that include every job description keyword into a resume, a process she actively discourages.

“It's a battle of AI versus AI. Recruiters are in a pickle right now," she said. "The actual system they thought was going to make life easier now is making life challenging for them.”

Job search sites like Indeed and LinkedIn have made it so easy for applicants to apply to jobs that human resources departments are inundated with hundreds of applications for a single position. The New York Times reports that the number of applications submitted on LinkedIn has surged more than 45% in the last year. The site now receives an average of 11,000 applications per minute, the Times reports. That's likely the effect of the strategy Martinelli calls "spray and pray," in which applicants just hit "apply" to any position for which they might qualify.

"I'm against it," Martinelli said. "It takes absolutely no time. You can do 100 of those a day. Employers have gotten too smart. They don't want you overusing AI. It doesn't look good."

To cope, many take gig work. About 4 in 10 millennials and Gen Zers have side jobs, according to research by Deloitte. Nearly 20% live with their parents. As a generation, they are struggling with money. In the past year, credit-card delinquency rates were highest for those ages 18 to 29, according to the Wall Street Journal, despite young adults trying to rein in spending. The Journal reported on data from Circana that found spending in stores and online among 18- to 24-year-olds dropped 13% between January and April.