The graduate 'jobpocalypse': Where have all the entry-level jobs gone? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTFpsuCor8

by sarmike31 • 10 months ago

27 35 10 months ago

al_borland• 10 months ago

It’s kind of interesting. When my sister graduated from college in 2003, the speaker mentioned it was the worst time ever to try and find a job. A couple years later in 2005, I heard the same thing when I graduated. I heard it at various other times over the years. And now today it is still the worst time ever to find a job.

After hearing the same line, fairly consistently, for nearly 25 years, I’m having a hard time taking it seriously.

davydm2• 10 months ago

you shouldn't - it was "the worst time to get a job" when I graduated in the late 90s too

there are a lot of factors involved, and AI is likely facilitating some of the bad behavior, but the problem seems to always come back to greed and corporate profit /2c

spwa42• 10 months ago

I finished the first year of Uni in June 2000, and my parents had informed me they would not support me the second year. So it was critical to find a job at that time. Found one. Didn't pay well, but covering a room + uni entry fees was pretty easy. More money than I'd ever seen except ...

Then, due to working full-time, it took me 7 years to finish my Uni degree and I managed to screw up my entry form in the final year. Meaning I got my master's degree in Aug 2008.

Both ended well. Hell in 2000 I wasn't even aware what was happening, though after a few months I figured out some of my colleagues were making 4x what I was making. But it was enough and I still climbed up.

I'm working on a doctorate now. Though one fact seems inevitable: if I ever finish it, the AIpocalypse will happen right exactly that month.

netdevphoenix2• 10 months ago

What's your field? That's a long time climbing the academic ladder. Is this Computer Vision or some other Machine Learning field?

aatd86• 10 months ago

for me in 2012 as well.. 2008 having alledgedly wiped a lot of jobs... recession fears and all that...

gdulli• 10 months ago

I see this meme a lot but the problem with it is that in the fable, the wolf really does come at the end.

roxolotl• 10 months ago

We have this data[0]. It’s not that bad out there right now compared to 2008-2013 but it is way worse than a few years ago. Everything is relative when it come to how people feel.

0: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...

squishington3• 10 months ago

My feeling is there are often factors which are not captured in job market statistics, which is why it's important to listen to the experience of grads seeking jobs. When I graduated in 2018, it took me a whole year to land a job (graduated with first class honours in electronics engineering in Australia, with 7 months overseas experience working for a chip design company in germany and a research scholarship at university). I came across job interviewers who had very irrational approaches to hiring, which I suspect was partly because they had too many applicants and were overworked processing them. One medical hardware company turned me down because they said I was overqualified and would get bored and quit. Overqualified as a grad. What a joke. I just needed a job before the next round of grads came out and left me forever shut out of my future field. It was a massive shock to my system as I had done nothing but work hard for years to get top marks and industry experience, and it still wasn't satisfactory (also building projects to showcase in interviews). I feel for new grads.

suddenlybananas• 10 months ago

Well, if things are gradually getting worse year over year it would always be true.

ceedan• 10 months ago

Compared to the 90s, I'm sure those years did feel pretty awful, but 2008-2010 were far worse. The global financial crisis caused college graduates to return to school for additional 1-2 year degrees in order to simply defer student loan payments, and avoid the job market. Once they graduated from their masters programs, or additional majors, they were still applying for the same entry level positions.

Bolwin• 10 months ago

That's exactly what's happening now too

davydm2• 10 months ago

Companies only hiring people with experience is far from a new problem.

Back in the late 90s, I struggled to get my first job that actually used my studied skills. Yes, I had a job - delivering pizza - but I was desperately trying to get a job _coding_, and in-between virtue-signallers only hiring people of a specific race and the vast majority of companies expecting years of experience, it took quite a while and I really only found a position because the place I studied at gets actively involved in the process.

Yes, the trend of trying to replace entry-level jobs with AI doesn't help, but this isn't a new problem. Few businesses have the foresight to train up employees, and a lot are understandably disillusioned by entry-level churn, where you train people, and the moment they have skills, they skip off to another company, usually for more money - when losing that person costs the company more than if they'd just pay them a market-related salary.

AI isn't helping, but it's far from a new problem - it's just exacerbated by the corporate greed chasing ever more profit, where the easiest way to see a short-term financial gain is to cut salaries.

nerdsniper2• 10 months ago

What was the ‘specific race’ that was popular to hire in the ‘90s?

iamflimflam1• 10 months ago

Back then being white and nerdy was a super power.

Probably a lot tougher for non white and non male.

piltdownman• 10 months ago

You're blaming DEI for not getting a job... during the .com boom?

If ever there was a softer time to get hired as a developer, I have yet to hear of it.

Analemma_• 10 months ago

It’s so insidious that its power can even reach backwards in time! Shredding our hallowed traditional values of causality.

The delusions would be funny if there weren’t so many people like the GP currently blowing up the lodestones of civilization because of them.

fred_is_fred• 10 months ago

I graduated during this time from a mid-tier school and had 5 offers for coding. None of them at a sexy dot-com but jobs far outstripped CS grads back then. There was also no DEI discussions going on at the time.

mikestew• 10 months ago

Meanwhile, everyone else in the late-90s was getting a job if they could spell HTML. But for you, the DEI kept you from employment?

undebuggable• 10 months ago

There are three career stages. First you're not qualified enough, then for a moment you're overqualified, and at last you're too old. The last stage occurs few decades before statutory retirement age.

c2h5oh• 10 months ago

Similar three stages are also at every job you have:

- you underperform while onboarding and rapidly learning to cover whatever skill gaps you discover

- you slowly go from doing OK to being overqualified, but it doesn't get reflected in compensation or title enough and your employer has little incentive to help you reach the next stage, because you are currently overperforming compared to your pay

- you are so much past your paygrade you quit and go to a company that will pay you what you will be worth after onboarding and learning to cover skill gaps

With everything that companies provided to earn long term employee loyalty being sacrificed to stock price employee growth through multiple roles in the same company has become more of an exception.

GoToRO• 10 months ago

From my own, local experience: the job is there, they just don't have the money to hire someone to do it. But the need is there.

netdevphoenix2• 10 months ago

If I was to start a business, I would be asked whether the cashflow is good enough to run the business. If it's not, because maybe I need some expensive resources I have no way to pay for even though the need is there, the business surely should not exist.

darth_avocado• 10 months ago

That would disqualify most of the startups into “should not exist” category.

cadamsdotcom• 10 months ago

What we used to think of as an entry level job is gone. The pieces of the role are slowly being absorbed into tooling and automation.

Entry level candidates must get some midlevel skills & experience to become hireable.

The education system is inadequate right now, so this means building a portfolio.

Fortunately there’s an infinitely patient teacher you can lean on: AI! Plus an insanely good resource in the form of youtube.

It’s never been a better time to be a self-starter.

And it’s never been a worse time to be hat-in-hand, out there begging for a job.

The graduate 'jobpocalypse': Where have all the entry-level jobs gone? [video]

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