As a graduating senior, let me tell you: It’s bleak out there.
Over this past summer, I decided I wanted to work a lowkey, entry-level job to save up some extra cash before my senior year. I sent out 27 job applications over the course of roughly a month — mostly retail with a few barista positions sprinkled in. Of those 27, I received requests for interviews from three. I was outright rejected from two, both barista positions. I received a job offer from only one. The other 21 employers ghosted me.
None of the jobs I applied for required any special training or advanced degree. None of them required hours I couldn’t work. None of them had any reason, on paper, not to hire me.
The retail job I ended up working paid salaries based on store volume — which meant I was underpaid for working a mall position despite the fact I was doing the same job and working the same hours as employees at the outlet location less than twenty minutes away. None of my coworkers, including my managers, had been working at the location longer than a month when I started. None of them were still working for the company when I left.
The part-time manager, also a college student, had been hired the same week I was and left around the same time since we both had to go back to school. The manager who hired me was criticized to my face by our district manager for multiple missteps, not the least of which was making the decision to hire two employees who both had to leave after a few months. The frank truth was the store was desperately understaffed as it was. When I was hired, the only employees at the location were the location manager and the full-time manager, both of whom left after another month.
During the job search, I remember explaining the struggle of just trying to get an interview to an older family member who told me that I wasn’t submitting my applications correctly, that I needed to print out my resume and hand it directly to the hiring manager, that if I just walked in and told them I wanted a job they would hire and train me on the spot. Every time I inquired in person about an application, they directed me online to the company’s website.
This isn’t an isolated experience. In fact, it’s an increasingly common story. Across the country, hiring rates are down and unemployment rates are up. I keep hearing that “no one wants to work anymore” — but the truth is people do want to work. They’re just not being hired.
Part of the reason for this may stem, as many things do, from the pandemic. Part of it may be the increasing automation of blue-collar jobs which have traditionally held high employment rates. Part of it may be that people are only willing to apply to and accept jobs which seem “worth it” — with decent benefits and a good minimum salary, now $15 an hour even where it’s not legally mandated. Part of it may be that “entry-level” positions often require three to five years of relevant experience or a bachelor’s degree as a minimum.
Is Generation Z truly just lazy and entitled? I’m inclined to say no. We’ve seen the generations that came before us. We see the current state of the job market. We see down the road to the next 20 years of the economy, to the world we’re entering, to the world we leave our children and our children’s children.
Again, I say: It’s bleak out there. Forgive us if the ennui set in early.
You can contact Natalie Allton at nallton@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
Natalie Allton is a senior from Columbus, Ohio. She likes writing about the media she loves, and she loves writing about the media she hates. You can contact her at nallton@nd.edu or follow her on Twitter (now X) @natalie_allton.
