When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week explained the central bank’s first rate cut of 2025, he zeroed in on one group: young people. “Kids coming out of college and younger people … are having a harder time finding jobs,” he said, pointing to a slowing labor market that has left many new grads struggling to land their first jobs, and acknowledging that the “job-finding rate is very, very low.”
Coming from the nation’s top economic policymaker, it was a stark acknowledgment of how elusive entry-level work has become.
Fresh research underscores the challenge new graduates face. Research firm Revelio Labs recently found that entry-level job listings are down 35% since 2023. Similarly, according to Cengage Group’s 2025 Employability Report , just 30% of this year’s graduating class have found full-time jobs related to their degree, while nearly half say they feel unprepared even to apply for entry-level positions.
The same report found that employers are pulling back on hiring new talent, with 75% reporting that they’ll fill the same number if or fewer entry-level roles compared with last year. At the same time, they’re demanding more credentials: 71% of employers now require a two- or four-year degree for entry-level work, up sharply from 55% just last year, even as fewer than 50% view a degree as a strong indicator of readiness.
Michael Hansen, CEO of Cengage Group , said this disconnect is leaving many graduates stranded. Unemployment for recent grads now sits at 5.8%, he noted, while employers complain they can’t find job-ready candidates. “The challenge isn’t just fewer jobs — it’s an education and employment disconnect,” Hansen said. “Employers need technical and digital skills, but colleges often emphasize only soft skills. Career readiness can’t be optional — it must be a shared responsibility.”
For Gregory J. Morris, CEO of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition , the problem is bigger than Gen Z. “Calling this pattern ‘hustle culture’ makes it sound like a trend,” he said. “In reality, today’s labor market no longer offers the launchpad it once did.” Young workers are patching together part-time jobs in retail, restaurants, or the gig economy just to make ends meet, he said, but in the process they’re losing out on crucial years of career growth, retirement savings, and professional development — falling behind previous generations, even as they’re forced to struggle harder.
“When early-career workers get stuck in churn, we all pay the price,” Morris said. “It depresses spending power and starves us of the skilled talent we’ll need five, ten years from now.” All of which means “this is a much larger warning sign for the health of our economy.”
Add in the disruptive force of AI, and the first rung of the career ladder looks even shakier. At an August event hosted by the College Guidance Network , Harvard Business School professor Joe Fuller said AI is cutting into routine, rules-based entry jobs in areas like paralegal work or tax prep. LinkedIn’s Aneesh Raman warned that “entry-level” is now more like starting in the lobby than the basement: candidates are expected to arrive with AI fluency and tangible work products already in hand.
The strain can be felt beyond the U.S. For Jen O., a 28-year-old based in Surrey, British Columbia, working one job simply isn’t enough. She puts in 40 hours a week as an HR and administrative manager at a cannabis company, then tacks on another 25 hours as an executive assistant and project manager for a marketing agency . The second role adds about $3,000 a month to her income — money that helps her pay down student loans and feel “more free financially.” Without it, she said, her definition of comfort wouldn’t be possible in a city where the cost of living keeps rising.
“On one hand, I enjoy what I do,” she told Quartz. “But on the other hand it’s a lot of work.”
Almost everyone Jen knows is in a similar situation. Friends and peers have side gigs on weekends or after hours, and she’s noticed how crowded the job market has become: New graduates are competing not just with one another but with seasoned workers laid off from higher-level roles. What bothers her most is the moving target of “entry-level” work.
“It doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. Employers rarely want to invest in training, and even junior roles tend to require at least two or three years of experience — an impossible ask for someone just out of school.
It’s not just job seekers who are worried, either — parents are feeling the strain, too. CGN’s own survey found that 53% of parents worry AI will erase entry-level jobs before their kids graduate, while over 60% say the fear has made them reevaluate the value of a college degree. In the organization’s live forum, comments from 1,500 parents boiled down to three words: despair, anger, hope.
But in public, the frustration is just as raw. On Reddit’s Gen Z forum , one recent poster described applying to more than 15 jobs at big-box stores and restaurants — Target, Costco, Home Depot, TJ Maxx — yet receiving automated rejections or, more often, simply no acknowledgement at all. Even roles like cashier or dishwasher demanded prior experience or extra certifications. In the meantime, they were piecing together babysitting and dogsitting gigs to scrape by, and weighing joining the military as a last resort.
Replies poured in with similar complaints: “entry-level” receptionist posts requiring an associate’s degree and three years’ experience, or degrees that felt like nothing more than an expensive “ticket” to nowhere.
Taken together, the picture is bleak: a generation told to prepare earlier and do more for jobs that are already vanishing. Powell and the Fed may try to soften the blow with lower interest rates, but monetary policy alone can’t create better on-ramps into the workforce.
“The solution isn’t to tell young people to work harder,” Gregory J. Morris of the NYCETC argued. “They already are. The solution is to create a system that works as hard for them as they are working for us.”
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