The hard truth is that companies overhired the year after COVID hit, and have spent the last year or two laying off those. If you look at any graph showing job

The hard truth is that companies overhired the year after COVID hit, and have spent the last year or two laying off those. If you look at any graph showing job listings, one will see that during COVID year (back to ZIRP), the numbers exploded. In the year prior to that, from '18 to '20, the numbers of job listings had started to flat out. Remember that the interest rates were going up back then, until COVID hit. Right now the number of job listings is roughly following the same trajectory as prior to COVID. Meaning that if you had built some regression model up until COVID, the model would put us around where we are today. For the young people that have never experienced this, it has happened before. And it will happen again. Most people are lucky enough that they will only experience this after big financial crashes, while others work in industries with natural boom and bust cycles. One day recruiters will wine and dine you, promising a job 12 months before you graduate, with a fat signing bonus and other perks. The next day they'll ghost you. I've gone through two of these.