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Young graduates are facing an employment crisis
- techpineapple 1y agoI've noticed some folks, seemingly on principle say that older folks should keep working, basically until they die, presumably because they don't want them to collect social security or other entitlements, but does that end up having the negative economic impact of making it harder for young folks to find jobs?
- cit3worker 1y agoplease do not blame this on "old people" anyone in corporate america in a hiring position knows the prevailing trend -- you either hire h1b (for maximum leverage) or overseas (for cost savings). we've been told to hire h1b ONLY.
- careersuicide 1y agoYou have a moral duty to report your employer for this. Frankly it should be treated the same as treason.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> it should be treated the same as treason No, it shouldn’t. Treason has a specific meaning.
- aspenmayer 1y agoIt’s anti-American behavior against a person in America as opposed to against the nation specifically. An attack on one is an attack on us all.
- chaosharmonic 1y agoLots of things are anti-American behavior. Most of those things aren't joining up with a foreign adversary with whom we're officially at war. Even things that are treasonous in a colloquial sense are still pretty narrow, and tend to refer to other specific forms of betraying your country, that just happen to be other crimes -- like espionage, or insurrection.
- MangoToupe 1y ago> Most of those things aren't joining up with a foreign adversary with whom we're officially at war. Adversary to the people, or the state? These are wildly different concepts. Just because my state has beef with China doesn't mean they can't convince me that my life is better with China in it. Sometimes states just misrepresent the people.
- chaosharmonic 1y agoRight, but in the same vein, the British crown has a documented history of applying that label to dissidents. It was part of why were revolted in the first place. Our definition for what constitutes treason is purposely narrow specifically due to the abuse potential.
- aspenmayer 1y agoI think it is anti-American to discriminate on the basis of origin. Where you are from has no bearing on many if not most jobs. I may not be making the point you think I’m making, I’m making a nuanced point that we have a duty to report treason, and we have a duty to report whatever it is when you have an ongoing state of affairs in which there exists a stated or effective policy of only (or never) hiring a certain group of people.
- janalsncm 1y agoIs it anti American to favor Americans for jobs?
- unethical_ban 1y agoTreason is a strong word. It is a knowingly detrimental action against American workers and companies to dodge requirements for hiring skilled foreign workers. The focus and the main point remains: It's unethical, it's illegal, and I wish punishment on the companies and the individuals who fraudulently scam American workers out of jobs.
- appleaday1 1y agostoph1b.com, we have a sub lets organize.
- MangoToupe 1y agoTreason isn't even a legal concept. Who cares about any given meaning without that? If it strikes you as treason, that's as good a reason to call it treason as any. Personally, I think there's lots of treason that pervades our life. Hell you could argue the meaning of "national interest" used by our state department is itself treasonous. Any definition of the word will come down to what you perceive as in our interests. For easy examples, see Snowden and Manning.
- astrange 1y ago> Treason isn't even a legal concept. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-3/section-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-3/section-3...
- MangoToupe 1y agoSorry, perhaps I should have said "not a well-defined legal concept", or else we would surely all be enemies of the state.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago[flagged]
- klipklop 1y agoReport what? They say everything verbally in a closed office. There is no paper trail. Even if there was, the entire industry and current administration are in complete alignment on this issue. They want to reduce labor costs.
- plandis 1y ago> we've been told to hire h1b ONLY If you’re not being hyperbolic, this seems like fraud on the part of whoever is submitting visa applications for your company.
- WorkerBee28474 1y agoWhich doesn't mean it isn't common.
- esseph 1y agoSounds about right.
- horns4lyfe 1y agoYa welcome to reality
- zeroCalories 1y agoI actually do blame this on old people. The reason jobs are being shipped overseas is because western workers are not productive enough to justify their premium. Work culture is part of that, but stuff like zoning and the welfare state is the main culprit.
- esseph 1y agoThis is actually not at all correct. US productivity per worker has gone up for a very long time. https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/in-brief-us-labor-productivity/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20a%202019%20AESG%20policy,prior%20waves%20of%20productivity%20growth. https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/in-brief-u...
- techpineapple 1y agoI'm not blaming this on "old people", and certainly not "old people" who want to work, I'm blaming it on a government that artificially deflates the retirement rate.
- alfalfasprout 1y agoyep. H1B needs a major reform. Unfortunately both the democratic party and the GOP is against reforming it.
- appleaday1 1y agostoph1b.com
- MangoToupe 1y agoI work at a Fortune 100 and for the most part, we can ONLY hire citizens and do not use H1Bs without a particularly strong reason. Curiously, I'd estimate we still hire 80% naturalized citizens.
- pirate787 1y agoThis is a common misconception about the economy. There is not a fixed pie of jobs to be distributed. Rather, the opposite is generally true, the more people working the more growth and innovation and the more opportunities and capacity for employment.
- techpineapple 1y ago"the more people working the more growth and innovation and the more opportunities and capacity for employment" So if I'm understanding this causal relationship you're suggesting, the problem is too many people are rejecting employment, and if more people wanted to work there would be more jobs?
- exe34 1y ago[flagged]
- Nevermark 1y agoAlso, he taking inspiration from Indiana and putting a 4.5% tariff on all imported circles.
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoNext they will be telling us about their new perpetual motion machine.
- Nevermark 1y agoWhile a pure perpetual motion machine isn't possible, "life", "economy", "knowledge" are all things that not only strongly tend to grow but compound. More people working doesn't just mean more jobs filled. It means more people making money and spending it, so more people needed on the supply side. The fact that it sounds circular doesn't make it bad logic in this case. It's actually a magnitude increasing spiral. All funded by the Sun.
- nradov 1y agoPeople who worked in the USA are entitled to collect Social Security once they are old enough. This applies regardless of whether they are still working. In other words, current income doesn't reduce Social Security benefits.
- jibe 1y agoIt would help, because they’d be paying payroll taxes into the system even as they were collecting benefits.
- readthenotes1 1y agoThere are tax disincentives to working while collecting social security.
- koolba 1y agoSure, but there’s similar tax disincentives to seeking more gainful employment as well.
- stockresearcher 1y agoThe social security taxes you pay are used to buy credits. You can buy a maximum of 4 credits per year. Once you have 40 credits you are allowed to draw benefits from the system - when you are old enough. If you only have 39 credits, you don’t get social security. When you go to collect benefits, there is a complicated formula based on income records that is used to turn your taxes paid into what is essentially a lifetime annuity. If you keep working, you keep paying social security taxes and you keep buying credits, but your annuity doesn’t change - you are forfeiting 100% of the tax you paid.
- xyzzy9563 1y agoThere's infinite potential jobs. Doing anything useful is a job.
- exe34 1y agoNo, doing something people are willing to pay for is a job.
- logicchains 1y agoThis isn't true because of the minimum wage: if people would be willing to pay you less than the minimum wage for something useful, but not more, that's not a job.
- Muromec 1y agoThat’s un-American!
- y-curious 1y agoThe minimum wage makes it illegal to work if you don't have the skills for minimum wage work. I wish more people understood this
- astrange 1y agoThere is no credible evidence that reasonable minimum wages have lowered employment in practice[0], and there are theoretical reason to believe it can increase it[1]. That said, the Australian and Danish systems are the best because they're more flexible. [0] This holds up to about 60% of median wages. You can imagine it'd lower the hours some people get before it entirely makes them unemployed. [1] One is that it provides price signals to monopsony employers. Another is that it reduces search costs in the labor market by basically acting as a spam filter that gets rid of time-wasting job offers.
- y-curious 1y agoCurious what you think about the UK, then. A software engineer in the UK makes 45k GBP on average. A minimum wage salary there (at 12.21 GBP per hour) is ~22k a year. The wage squeeze between skilled professional and minimum wage surely lowers the amount of people entering skilled professions
- aspenmayer 1y agoI never looked at it like that. Perhaps allowing folks to work after retirement age is a form of age discrimination to a certain reading. Social Security should be sufficient for everyone’s retirement. If it isn’t, that’s a separate issue, and is also effectively another form of age discrimination, promising a funded retirement and the other party not upholding their end of the bargain.
- MangoToupe 1y agoInterestingly you can trace the establishment of the retirement age, and of social security, directly to the frustration that younger people can't easily compete with lifelong workers.
- sxp 1y agohttps://archive.is/41JyI https://archive.is/41JyI
- kkylin 1y agoSome relevant data: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...
- whatshisface 1y agoWho knew, art history is more employable than finance.
- readthenotes1 1y agoYou apparently didn't look at the underemployment and median early career wage data. I'm guessing that many people with a art history degree do not work in art history...
- angmarsbane 1y agoOr perhaps its a vanity degree? Or its pursued by people with family wealth and good connections, the sort that an auction house or high-end gallery would want to hire.
- em500 1y agoSome more: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CGMD25OM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CGMD25OM
- photonthug 1y agoThanks, probably better than TFA. The under-employment numbers are always telling, anyone who talks about employment without mentioning this is running a scam. Sobering to see that only elementary ed and nursing are really doing ok, fields where we're always chronically short. And even while everyone's talking about demographic bombs and aging populations, nurse-adjacent med-tech is still sitting at 57.9%.
- leereeves 1y agoEven so, computer science is still among the fields with the lowest reported underemployment rate. It's essentially tied for second place, after nursing, with a much higher salary. I wonder how to reconcile those stats with the stories I hear about the CS job market.
- lentoutcry 1y agoI get unemployment being high for office-based jobs right now, companies think they can slap AI onto everything and get rid of employees, but what’s the reason for min wage jobs? Are they suddenly overflowing with applicants?
- atemerev 1y agoMin-wage jobs normally have a lot more applicants than skilled/office-based jobs. Every skill is a barrier.
- afavour 1y agoThe economy is in a general downturn, so it's not all attributable to AI.
- paxys 1y agoWho says unemployment in min wage jobs is high?
- morkalork 1y agoMin wage jobs are in the service industry which will take a hit from people pulling back on discretionary spending. Is it one of those "because people think there might be a recession, they manifest one" things?
- barchar 1y agoSeems like it isn't. The last few years have been really good for the bottom of the income/wealth distribution. Tbh with the federal deficit at 6-7% of GDP I think it'll be somewhat hard to produce a recession. Eventually companies will figure out the shoe isn't going to drop and start hiring again.
- janalsncm 1y agoI believe the changes have more to do with US tax laws which have made it harder for companies to write off R&D. Companies might say it’s due to AI to put an investor-friendly spin on it. I’m biased and it worries me that the above is also what I’d like to believe, rather it being than a permanent tightening of the screws on SWEs. We could test the hypothesis to see if the same trends happened in other countries (like Canada) who didn’t change their tax policies.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- paxys 1y agoLots of assertions in the article, but the only fact I see is that new college grads looking for work had a 6.6% unemployment rate over the last 12 months, along with a hand-wavey > about the highest level in a decade—excluding the pandemic unemployment spike Why "about"? What was this number 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? During the dotcom bubble? The housing crisis? An actual recent crisis (the pandemic) is conveniently excluded from the comparison for some reason. Weird for the WSJ to declare an "unemployment crisis" based on a handful of anecdotes and no actual data.
- HPsquared 1y agoBear in mind they've already lost 4 years of employment by taking the degree.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kevintb 1y agoI think the thing that’s unusual and backed up by data is that being a college grad right now has higher unemployment rate than the total average unemployment rate. This has never been the case in history until recently.
- jasonfarnon 1y agowell according to the article: "Moreover, the gap between the unemployment rate for these young graduates and the broader population became its widest in about 35 years of comparable New York Fed analysis."
- conductr 1y agoUnemployment is a loaded statistic anyway. I'm going to assume that they are working but just not in a 'career' job. They're likely working in a restaurant or in retail which is technically employed. My qualitative view on the job market right now is this line holds true > But it is a bad time to be a job seeker—especially if you are young.
- jmyeet 1y agoThis is history repeating itself and it will only get worse. We saw this in 2008 post-GFC where entry-level white collar jobs just completely disappeared. It was really the start of millenials graduating with a ton of debt, possibly postgrad degrees, and working at Starbucks. Not because their degrees are useless. Their entry-level jobs just disappeared. This has never recovered. So you don't have to search long to find now 40 year olds who are permanent renters, have barely enough in their bank account to pay this month's bills, definitely don't own their own house, still have a ton of student debt they're unlikely to ever be able to repay and realizing they have no hope and they have no choice but to work 3 jobs until they die. Yet those who believe in the myth of meritocracy just write this off as a personal moral failure or getting "philosophy degrees". At the older end, boomers simply have no idea because they bought their $2 million house for $11,000 in 1976. Failure to understand that means being surprised by the groundswell to Trump and Bernie in the 2016 election cycle they each represented change in their own way. Those who have benefitted from the current system simply don't understand that many want to tear down the system. They have nothing left to lose. Gen-Z is now going through this exact same thing. Many don't yet understand they're looking at their future when they see a 40 year old barista or DoorDash driver. All while the ultra-wealthy continue to get even wealthier at an extraordinary rate. We will likely see the first trillionaire in our lifetimes. This cannot and should not continue.
- Jcampuzano2 1y agoThere are parts I agree with when it comes to older people being out of touch - but I'm going to go a bit against the grain here even if some don't like it. I have rarely met someone with a STEM degree who was entirely unable to get a decent paying job. It is not unreasonable to say that some degrees are not as valuable as others and will be more likely to struggle financially. Its a game of statistics. You are more likely to struggle financially with a degree in philosophy than a degree in engineering. Because even companies themselves when hiring for completely unrelated positions to a persons degree will take into account the fact that the engineering graduate probably worked a lot harder than the philosophy graduate. But I do agree that the average non-degree or "less valuable" degree holder from the past had a much larger chance of making it out okay than nowadays.
- yardie 1y agoMy experience graduating right into the dot-bomb was it absolutely sucked. I, a fresh-faced grad, was competing against experienced engineers who were laid off after Y2K, Cosmo, Yahoo, and other dotcoms for entry-level jobs. I wasn't very bitter then, but now when I meet mid-20s developer with "senior" or "director" titles, it hurts knowing that 3-5 years of my career was wasted trying to string together credible work history portfolio. The best thing I did was tap out, sell my car, turn in my apartment keys, bought a one way ticket, and stuff my life into large backpack. I saw lots of things, made lots of friends, and met a life partner. Simply because life decided to unplug the career treadmill and there was no point in me trying to run on it.
- eldaisfish 1y agoa mid 20s person with "director" in their title sounds good on paper but there is no credible replacement for experience.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoYeah, I'm assuming they signed onto a startup with a bad case of title inflation.
- chaosharmonic 1y agoCan confirm, I myself was a one person support desk (for a restaurant chain) and just never officially had a title. The internal moniker of "the IT guru" was fine for an email signature, but certainly not for a resume. (I've since made other retroactive edits to that, both for something more sensible and to better represent years of scope creep.)
- anon7000 1y agoStartups are weird though, new college grads can be (inexperienced) CTOs & CEOs if they start a company together
- jvanderbot 1y agoI have a former coworker in their early 20s who left a startup as Senior (they were 1 year out from graduating) to become a "Director" at another startup. Their first job was implementing the control law for the robot's wheels. In this case (and perhaps many others), "Director" just meant "Only person we have".
- starik36 1y agoTo all the naysayers here denying that an employment crisis for STEM graduates exists... I didn't believe it either until it happened to my kid. He is a top notch software developer, far better than I was at his age, problem solving comes naturally for him. And yet, he can't even get an interview. He worked at Dropbox for a year as a contractor right out of school, until they did a huge layoff and hasn't been able to find anything in 6 months. Real interviews are super rare - most of it just recruiters fishing for stuff. So that is the reality that he and his peers are facing.
- umvi 1y agoMy experience is that there is an AI war going on right now. Employers are deluged with AI-augmented/generated resumes that make candidate seem perfect (but then they flop in an in-person interview), so employers are now filtering said AI-augmented resumes with AI to even determine who to advance in the pipeline. It's a viscous arms race and if you aren't playing the game it's really hard to get an "in" without knowing someone on the inside already.
- starik36 1y agoYes, I've seen that. But I am not sure how to even play this AI game. My kid is trying various methods but none of them are very successful.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoIf you're on here, there's a good chance you have more connections in the industry than you realize. The best way to avoid being AI-filtered is never have your resume get fed to the AI in the first place, which means applying through back channels. Recommendations from trusted employees are valuable not out of nepotism or some other sinister force, they're valuable because it acts a pre-filter for the kinds of fuckups that no one would be willing to recommend.
- barchar 1y agoYep, market for lemons, sadly
- zizee 1y agoDoes this mean the H1B visa program will be curtailed? /s
- Muromec 1y agoExpanded you mean? Wouldn’t that be nice if companies could buy and sell h1b workers? They are not citizens anyway and the Constitution doesn’t give em any rights even if they think they are white
- voat 1y agoNon-citizens still have rights
- throwawayoldie 1y agoI believe there was an implicit /s at the end of that comment. At least, I really hope so.
- appleaday1 1y agostoph1b.com lets organize and bring positive change.
- nirav72 1y agoLets hope so. But looks like the current admin hasn’t done much to restrict it. Other than raise filing fees, which is usually paid by the employer.
- testing1235 1y agoI'm currently a senior in university (Dual CS and Computer Engineering), and I can say that it looks unbelievably grim in the Computer Science side of things. In my classes there is hardly anyone that has been able to get their hands on an internship, and even the professors have started their classes with monologues about "I don't even know why you show up, none of you will have jobs after graduation, good luck out there." (quote from my DS professor) A lot of my peers are looking to move out of the US and look for jobs elsewhere, or perhaps jump straight into graduate school to ride it out. On the Computer Engineering side, the faculty seems a lot happier, and the students also seem to be better off. But I don't think this will last however, I have noticed a steady decline in the businesses that have been searching for Computer Engineering in our career fairs. When I enrolled there were about two dozen "Computer Engineering Wanted" posters at the fair, and the last one in Feb 2025 I only counted one. I'm honestly thinking that if this continues I'll be looking at the military, right now I'm trying to work on side projects in the meantime.
- pchristensen 1y agoThere's setting expectations, but saying "none of you will have jobs after graduation" feels criminally cynical and counter productive, especially coming from a teacher.
- rezmason 1y agoWhat do y'all think of this one? In 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, one of my commencement speakers (and the recipient of an honorary doctorate) was Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express. I don't remember his exact words, but his message to the graduating class was, we have a different perspective on the world and different values— thriftier ones, necessarily— and if we stay true to them, the world will reflect them when we succeed. "Maybe instead of having a car, like your parents' generation, your first big purchase may be a bike. Times change." Something like that. Four days later, he laid off four thousand workers from AmEx, just a smidge more people than the graduating class. Edit: according to Wikipedia, that year he took home $16.6 million.
- wnc3141 1y agoI know someone at a growing division of a FAANG who has not been allowed to hire anyone outside of India for a number of years now. They're critically understaffed but the screws only tighten with each year.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gsf_emergency_2 1y agoLabor tariffs, anyone? Might even give the Dems some ideas!
- wnc3141 1y agocertain domestic market protections would be wise for any politician to support, unfortunately the craziness of this administration smothers the conversation. https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/05/trump-tariffs-liberals/682697/ https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/05/trump-ta...
- lazide 1y agoSecond 174 changes from BBB pretty much are for the tech industry - dropped the prior 5 year depreciation schedule to immediate, and foreign depreciation is now 15 years (!!!). I can’t see how a US company doing dev outside the US would make any sense anymore, unless they’re big enough to structure everything away.
- alephnerd 1y ago> I can’t see how a US company doing dev outside the US would make any sense anymore The tax incentives are insane depending on size. Getting $20-40k in tax credits per employee, 100% tax deductions on R&D, and around 20-50% of total investment cost getting subsidized when building a GCC is the norm in Czechia, Poland, India, and Costa Rica, along with various additonal local or state credits. A number of mid-level leaders (Staff, Principal, EMs, PMs) at tech companies are also on work visas with little to no chance of converting to a GC, so employers will let them open a GCC in their home country.
- cdreke 1y agoThis is what I would say to my younger self if I was starting out today: This is no different than at other times in history. Creative destruction at its best. New jobs will arise and there will be plenty of jobs to go around once the new growth cycle gets underway. In the meantime, create your own job. Youthful flexibility is your biggest asset. Be helpful and you will succeed. Oh, and stay away from social media. It is the cigarette of the day - you don't need to smoke because everyone else is doing it.
- ternaryoperator 1y agoOf the many good comments, this is the one that IMHO is the most helpful. I got my first real job in a very down employment market--much worse than today. Got skills, learned how business worked. Found a pigeonhole where I could profitably work for myself based on the new skills. Built a reputation. Was hired by folks who needed my expertise, etc. The key for me was to get an accurate read on the employment market and let it guide my decisions. My path night not be directly reproducible, but the orientation in OP's post nails the kind of thinking that's needed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kulahan 1y agoIt took me way too long in life to realize that you can do whatever gives you money, at the end of the day. Like it doesn’t have to be a job, just anything that gets cash to you. Some people run errands. Some people make stuff. Some people are valuable friends. Some people are wise advisors. Some people help you get healthy. Whatever! I know this is painfully obvious in hindsight, but maybe something about 18 straight years of “your choices are military, college, or trades” prevented me from thinking outside the box. I probably would’ve gotten started on a career I was excited about a loooot earlier in life.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rr808 1y ago> New jobs will arise and there will be plenty of jobs to go around once the new growth cycle gets underway. That is a gamble. Everyone talks about how the dotcom bust quickly recovered and housing bust recovered. But that period was when smart phones started, everyone got broadband and most businesses moved to the web. Can you be surely something else will come along?
- moosedev 1y agoThread from 30 days ago (albeit without much discussion at the time) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44294488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44294488
- internet1776 1y ago[dead]
- guywithahat 1y agoI think a lot of people are missing the point. It's not that the economy is bad, it's that there's a mismatch. We have tons of graduates who just finished with a degree in X, but we need people for job with skills Y
- lispisok 1y agoWhat is X and Y?
- immibis 1y agoX is useful things like construction and computer science. Y is how to make people give you more of their money.
- guywithahat 1y agoIt's unclear from the article, I'm just saying this is what the data shows. The economy is strong, and young people can find jobs, but the findings in the article suggest young people with degrees are having trouble getting jobs. The example they give is a girl who has a degree in "health communications". Another, with a degree in "cognitive science", found a job in data science. A critical reader might describe these degrees as a "degree in fluff".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yash1hi 1y agoReferenced unemployed new grad here! I think a lot of what contributes to this is the thought that a degree=employment for college students. We feel scammed, confused, and quite frankly just angry that this was the timing to graduate into. As a CS student I have many thoughts around the reasoning for this (AI reducing need for junior engineers, oversaturated market from COVID bubble, opaque job requirements/too low of bar). As much as I'd like to believe it's just a skill difference on my side, it's hard to deny my peers' and friends' struggle around me. I don't want my livelyhood to come down to a numbers/chance game. But sadly, that's what it is looking like right now.
- collingreen 1y agoGood luck out there from a millennial that's been through a couple "once in a lifetime" crashes, a global pandemic, decades of unending war, and a reduction in labor protections that appear to be just getting started. My only advice is to keep costs low, don't give up, and find work where you can. It seems to cycle around so hopefully you'll end up ok but the days where degree=job were dying when I graduated 20 years ago so I assume there is left of that by now.
- dmoy 1y ago> the days where degree=job were dying To be fair, the previous iteration of "degree=job" that was dying 20 years ago was the older definition - broad enough to include "degree in literally anything", which was closer to how it operated say 50 years ago. GP looks to have gone with the newer advice of "get a more useful degree = job". That wasn't really dying 20 years ago. Or even 10 years ago. --- Definitely agree about keeping costs low. Even if you do get a good job, if you keep costs low for long enough, it compounds like crazy.
- JohnMakin 1y agoYea my year entered the job market from college in 2008 - pretty much the worst time ever at that time. It sounds very similar. I think, if I look at my more successful peers including myself, many of us hunkered down and took whatever jobs we could get, many of us went back to school and got second "useful" degrees such as CS/nursing/etc. My career path is so bizarre I don't really ever talk about it in great detail because it is so unique I think it identifies me and me exactly. Lots of others I know with similar stories. I would not want to go through it again.
- _ea1k 1y agoHonestly, I think the impact of AI on jobs at all levels is being understated by folks here, as insane as that is. Oh, I don't mean because it is actually doing people's jobs, or even because it is making people more productive (though it certainly is doing that in some cases). I mean because management has bought into a lot of strange and misleading ideas about where it is right now. They think that you get a 10x engineer by using AI IDEs and other tools. If it fails with their existing tech, that clearly means it wasn't trained on their current tech stack so they should switch! There are a lot of sales opportunities, but the reality and the things that non-practitioners and practitioners are seeing are far apart.
- northhnbesthn 1y agoWhich is fine. If they’re right they’re right.
- kaiwenwang 1y agoI'm trying to work out the theory behind this, but the rough metric is that it's due to increased transportation, automation, and consolidation. As businesses expand they leave less opportunity for those local to do something meaningful while those who run the companies are rich beyond measure. Students cram into college for the hopes of being on the other side, not the "below the API" side. Measurement then becomes graded upon standard features as differentiation becomes harder: GPA, test scores, essay rubrics, etc. Combined with increased communication, online portals become spammed within minutes. All this leads to quite a difficult time for the young. Inequality likely ends up being a function of the country size. It explains the USA, PRC, India, but not sure about places like Pakistan, Brazil, or Indonesia. Still draft, but wrote a bit here about the roles in society: https://bedouin-attitude-green-fire-6608.fly.dev/writing/a-diagram-of-upward-motion https://bedouin-attitude-green-fire-6608.fly.dev/writing/a-d...
- quantified 1y agoSupply and demand. Too many people crashing into the world. Businesses are better at running with fewer people and successful businesses prevent conpetitors from getting very far, that's why they are successful.
- mathiaspoint 1y agoI don't think that's it at all. It feels a lot more like a large scale coordination problem to me.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoThe market is 100% efficient with everyone investing in index funds. /s
- chubs 1y agoAnecdata: Recently spoke with a friend's son who graduated compsci a year-ish ago, he reckons none of his year got jobs, now working in a kitchen. (in australia for context). Very sad. For comparison, I graduated just after the dot-com crash, and our year mostly found jobs, just not very good ones, so maybe they're doing worse than we did. Good luck convincing anyone to study compsci any more.
- somanyphotons 1y agoSlightly off topic, did Australia ever fix the laws around stock options that meant you paid taxes on unrealized gains? I always wonder about things like that stifling the start-up ecosystem and lower numbers of jobs
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- s-lambert 1y agoYou don't pay taxes on unrealized gains in Australia unless they're in a self-managed superannuation fund and you have over $2 million. Regular investments outside of super are only taxed when you realize the gains. Superannuation is your retirement funds, doesn't seem that relevant to the start-up ecosystem.
- jamesy0ung 1y agoAs an Aussie computer science student, I do wonder what they are actually looking for. I know full well that uni isn’t teaching anything useful (heck my uni doesn’t even allow compsci students to take C programming) so I try and extend my knowledge by working on projects in my own time. Recently I’ve been getting into reverse engineering, before that I was writing my own shell from scratch in C. Is this good stuff to do job-wise?
- astrange 1y agoSure. Contributing to open-source, releasing and maintaining independent projects, is also good because it shows you can work with others and finish things on your own. Looking for internships is good if there are any. You might want to be a bit more trendy, or else boring and corporate, but what's really important is that you can pick anything up quickly the first time you see it. So technically, what you actually know right now doesn't matter.
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- tennisflyi 1y agoI’ve faced this since 2020. ATS are the true gatekeepers. Someone finally sued
- hnpolicestate 1y agoAnyone else interested in generations and eras? When did the "knowledge economy" begin in the West, late 60's? Anyway I imagine LLM's are in the process of killing off the knowledge economy. Personal computers expanded it.
- redwood 1y agoStay hungry
- NetOpWibby 1y ago2008 all over again
- Nifty3929 1y agoTwo big problems: 1. For most people and most degrees, college does not make one more useful to society. 2. Even for those people/degrees that do make people more useful, that doesn't mean society benefits from an unlimited number of them. For example, a math degree likely makes one more useful as a math teacher, but society does not have an unlimited need for math teachers. We should stop encouraging people to go to college. It's a huge waste of societal resources, most particularly the years of life of the students themselves. How about go to work after high school, and then if you feel like you would benefit from additional formal education, then you go to college.
- astrange 1y agohttps://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/median-weekly-earnings-by-educational-attainment-first-quarter-2025.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/median-weekly-earnings-by-... If you want college degrees to not mean something, you'd need to stop paying people with college degrees more. Note the high paying no-college jobs may also have filters like apprenticeships.
- s1mplicissimus 1y agowhere I'm from, apprenticeships are not seen as a gatekeeping mechanism, but instead as an opportunity to learn something "useful" (aka some trade or craft) and get started with low or no pre-training - typically apprenticeships will start at age ~15 and take 3 years. Businesses are supported by state subsidies for educating apprentices. It's not all rose petals but overall seems like a valid option for someone who can't/doesn't want to pursue a higher education career.
- astrange 1y agoI think Americans are culturally afraid other people will take their jobs, so they love industry barriers to entry. Even when this means the only people working in a given field are all about to retire. The hardcore version of this is labor unions of course, but the small version is occupational licensing for all kinds of small-time occupations like hairdressing. They shouldn't worry so much, since Americans are also culturally afraid of any kind of job where you have to do X if they think they aren't an "X person", to the point they won't apply to do it for any amount of money. Applies to physical labor (farmworkers) as much as mental (anything where you have to do math).
- epolanski 1y agoDo not forget that while number of graduates is at historically high levels, the economy hasn't adapted to it. Still needs drivers, bakers, plumbers, etc. I've read that since then 70s the ratio of blue vs white collar in US has shifted by few % digits, but the number of graduates has boomed in the meantime. This means that now jobs that never required a degree require one and titles are inflated to make people feel better.
- downrightmike 1y agoWe actually have more than enough jobs for graduates, they are just being outsourced to india/manila. We really don't need more bakers, Wonderbread saw to that. Why drive when uber destroyed the taxis and trucking companies barely pay their drivers? You are living in a wishful world that will not align with reality.
- hackable_sand 1y agoWhich one are you? Driver, baker, or plumber?
- morgannewman 1y ago[dead]
- cod1r 1y agoI was a recent grad (2023) too but now I think that expecting a job solely with a bachelors isn't realistic anymore. Standards are being raised and it's even more "who you know not what you know" than it used to be. The only thing advice i can give to grads right now is work on what you are passionate about and take care of your health.
- noobly 1y agoPersonal question, but I had to drop out a couple years ago as a Math/CS senior. I felt like the clock was really ticking back then to get my foot in the door. I'm considering re-enrolling (only two terms remaining), would it be better to wait until if/when the market has recovered so I can enter the market with a fresh degree? I worry a downside of completing it now would be a stale degree by the time the job market recovers. Assuming equal job experience, employers seem to prefer fresh graduates. But you know what they say about time in the market vs timing the market..
- monero-xmr 1y agoYou are over analyzing this. It doesn’t matter. No one cares about when you graduated. You are going to need to hustle. If you are truly passionate about this industry you will make it work. Trying to fit some ideal on paper with timing is impossible
- noobly 1y agoThanks, you're probably right. I do feel that letting the dust settle on the AI layoff hype train might be prudent, but getting it done sooner is likely best.
- alephnerd 1y agoHow much would it cost to complete your degree? Could you take online or CC courses that you could transfer to your old program? While having no degree hasn't historically been much of a blocker, during a weaker job market credentials can and do play a role in tie breaking during hiring. Honestly, even a WGU style bachelors degree can be enough depending on years of experience.
- noobly 1y agoNot much given that it's a state school and I only have two terms (6-8 courses) remaining. I'll probably re-enroll this fall, perhaps I've been too negative. Thanks for the input.
- tpurves 1y agoGraduate employment crises happen at least once every decade (initial covid, 2008 crisis, dotcom bust, early 90s recession etc). What I could argue is more unusual are those bubble times when getting a great job right out of college is easy. And then how quickly those expectations are taken for granted... GenX'ers will remember the days of 'Slackers' 'Reality Bites' and the malaise of those who graduated with fancy degrees in the early 90's but stuck in barista jobs etc.
- ChuckMcM 1y agoIf you're young and reading this and having feelings of fear and dread, I can sympathize. When I graduated with an engineering degree the industry was saying that there would be no jobs for us because all of the engineering was either being done elsewhere or that our skills wouldn't translate to what engineers needed to know. There were bits of truth in that, hardware was moving off shore, software was still very much local, and new tools and techniques were sprouting up. But the truth is, and has always been, that smart people (and you need a base level of cognition to successfully graduate with an engineering degree) are always needed. What they are spending their "cleverness beans" doing (as an early mentor of mine once called the propensity for humans to innovate) is always in demand. And no matter what you have heard, there has yet to be invented any replacement for either human intuition or creativity.
- anal_reactor 1y ago> But the truth is, and has always been, that smart people (and you need a base level of cognition to successfully graduate with an engineering degree) are always needed. Not exactly. I feel like the rise of big tech showed us that it's corporate cogwheels that are most successful career-wise. Moreover, even if what you say is true, it's becoming ridiculously difficult to tell who is smart and who isn't.
- ChuckMcM 1y agoI appreciate your insight, it did make me wonder. > I feel like the rise of big tech showed us that it's corporate cogwheels that are most successful career-wise. I would be interested to hear how you reason to that. What is your definition of "success" and what is your definition of "cog wheel"? Here is why I ask, I know hundreds of engineers who consider themselves "successful" because they have accumulated enough wealth to not ever have to work again if they choose not to. Recent data[1] shows there are over 342 thousand millionaires in the Bay Area alone. I find it hard to reconcile the idea that they were all 'corporate cogwheels' (which sounds a bit pejorative but again, I don't know how you define it). > it's becoming ridiculously difficult to tell who is smart and who isn't. Again, I really would be interested to hear more about this. I find it trivially easy to tell who is "smart" and who isn't. But I will grant you that it is a skill that is enhanced by a lot of exposure to people who aren't smart but would like you to believe they are. They are a LOT of those types around. There is also a nuance between "smart" and "lazy" in that I know some really smart people who are also incredibly lazy, avoiding actually learning things if they can get by with faking it or cheating. Your comment also made me realize that I have a working definition of 'smart' that is different than 'book learning' smart, it is more a mixture of a willingness to learn, the humility to learn from anyone, and the fortitude to put effort into seeking out new information. That is different than what some people call 'smart' and I might call 'quick' in that they can make up a plausible answer quickly so it sounds like they are speaking from understanding not just bullshitting you. My wife used to call that 'Male Answer Syndrome' :-). The idea that one must never say "I don't know" or "I have no idea." [1] https://www.alonereaders.com/article/details/3057/top-10-cities-with-the-highest-number-of-wealthy-residents-in-2025 https://www.alonereaders.com/article/details/3057/top-10-cit...
- susiecambria 1y agoI remember well early 1986 when I was applying for jobs. Experience required, but no way to get experience. Frustrating as hell, especially since I had no peers around and had no BA (I left college a semester early cuz I had enough credits but didn't graduate for months). I ended up getting a cool job for $11,000/year and cobbled together a stable work life. It took another 5+ years to finally get my shit together. Ended up as the director of public policy for a small nonprofit only because the new policy staffer was going to be paid more than I was. For the board to give me the substantial pay increase I deserved based on experience, I had to be a director. Yet I only managed myself; I'm a crap supervisor so that was fine with me. What was funny was that people outside the organization were perplexed about why the policy work across the organization was so varied. I operated as a lobbyist because that was what was required and that is what I'm good at. But the new staffer was a policy analyst and advocate. The executive director and board seemed to be fine with that arrangement, but again, the difference was noted outside the org. Not sure that was good for the organization and the mission.
- SamuelAdams 1y agoOr, alternatively, the crop of current grads education is abysmal compared to past graduates, and companies are reluctant to hire them. This is the first graduate class since Covid. Pivoting to online learning quickly resulted in worse learning outcomes for k-12 and college as well. Companies are seeing a decline in base-level skills typically expected from previous classes of new graduates. They can either hire now and pay the cost of training for possibly 1-2 years to get them to an appropriate level, or hire no one and instead hire from the classes of 2026 and 2027, assuming those students improve from the post-Covid education system.
- s1mplicissimus 1y agoidk why this was downvoted but anyway: the educational fallout from covid affected all ages, so the effect really is going to last for the next decade at least, with fading effects towards the younger generations as the educational system hopefully will be able to patch up the gaps somewhat. And if you grant that the negative effects will last much longer than 2 years, it doesn't make a lot of sense business wise to hold off new hires for that long
- cjbgkagh 1y agoI scroll through linked-in and I see a lot of green looking for work tags. Many of these are really strong developers that have been laid off in the last few years. This feels much worse than 2008 and 2008 was bad. At least back then there was hope that things would recover, now it feels like a permanent malaise has set in. I got my first real tech job with Microsoft shortly after the 2008 financial crisis and right before the layoffs. Microsoft had an early form of Uber and a number of the drivers were recently laid off tech people that would hand me their resumes for me to give to my boss. I read them and it was revealing how a careers could go sideways out of nowhere and former highly credentialed executives could be reduced to asking me, a new hire, for such a favor on the very small chance that something could come of it. The whole market is a lemon market with a crazy information asymmetry between employer and employee. This has steadily gotten worse my whole career, I eventually became self employed just to get away from it. Leave the lemon market for the lemons. The threats of being replaced by low cost Indians has given way to threats of being replaced by low cost AI. And many people were replaced by Indians and I’m sure many will be replaced by AI. AI is already more helpful than any junior hire I’ve ever had. This sets a rather high low bar for ability for junior devs to meaningfully contribute. I’m not sure what my advice to a new grad would be. Life is the mother of all selection criteria biases. I don’t find solace in false optimism. The point of false optimism is to avoid despondent inaction, but it’s best to realistically understand your situation in order to make the necessary tough decisions.
- mavelikara 1y agoAre you Steve Balmer?
- cjbgkagh 1y agoSteve Balmer is a hype-guy
- AbstractH24 1y agoI’d like to think this will leads to a new wave of startups and innovation. Hope I’m right?
- unixhero 1y agoI had to completely abandon my 5 year 2 degree studies and get a job in enterprise it transformation. It has been like this since 2012
- guskel 1y agoIf they’re talking about this now, it’s been going on for a while. Just finally reaching the public consciousness now where it’s a common subject on the news.
- northhnbesthn 1y agoA non-insignificant portion of HNers found jobs during one of the last 3-4 economic downturns. They seem to happen frequently. In truth it’s always a crisis mode. Build your networks and demonstrate value and competence such that when people leave your company they’ll regret not having you on their team. This is the right way to stay employed once you land your first gig.
- ChromaticPanic 1y ago7% unemployment means 93% are employed. So it's really not that bleak.
- octo888 1y agoThe way we cheered on remote work is really biting us in the ass. It's scary how many people I know or accounts I've read about all new hiring in their department just being Indian remote employees.