The entry-level job market is the worst it’s been in 37 years. Stop blaming Gen Z

Months of hot takes have blamed Gen Z for bad attitudes, no work ethic, and too many demands. But labor market data tells a far less convenient story. The entry-level rungs of the employment ladder are splintering beneath America’s youngest workers — and the data makes clear this isn’t a generational character flaw. It’s a structural collapse.

Headline indicators suggest a strong labor market. Under the hood, persistent weaknesses are festering. The “low-hire, low-fire” market means employers are hesitant to make any changes to their payroll. For mid-career employees, that stability is a relief. For young people trying to land a first job, it’s a dead end.

In 2025, the share of unemployed Americans who are new workforce entrants hit a 37-year high, peaking at 13.3% in July before settling at 10.6% this February. That is still higher than at any point during the Great Recession. When hiring slows, the door closes first on recent graduates and those new to the workforce.

[Moved the 37-year high stat up and made it the paragraph’s lead — it’s the piece’s most alarming single data point and was previously buried as a supporting detail. “That’s still higher than any point during the Great Recession” elevated to its own sentence for emphasis.]

The Jobs That Were Supposed to Be Theirs Have Vanished

Today’s labor market gains are isolated and uneven, largely bypassing young workers. Job gains have been narrowly concentrated in health care and social services. Meanwhile, finance and information services — industries that once provided an on-ramp for the lion’s share of recent college graduates — are hemorrhaging jobs, shedding an average of 9,000 jobs per month since 2023. Before the pandemic, those same industries were adding 44,000 jobs per month. Young workers are refreshing job boards only to find a shrinking pool of openings. A record number of new workers are arriving at the doorstep of the labor market just as employers are pulling the door shut.

Gen Z doesn’t lack hustle. As this generation tries to find their footing in the traditional market, many are turning to side hustles. More than half — 57% — of Gen Zers now juggle additional work such as making content, selling crafts, and working in the gig economy, compared to just 21% of Baby Boomers. There’s real entrepreneurship in the side-hustle surge, but there’s also a warning sign. Across the economy, a ballooning share of workers are cobbling together part-time or multiple jobs to stay afloat. In this context, the boom in side-hustle culture reflects a generation piecing together income in a market that offers too little stability and too few pathways to advancement.

The College Degree No Longer Guarantees What It Once Did

What labor economists first documented among Black college graduates a decade ago — that doing everything “right” still didn’t guarantee stable employment — has since rippled across the entire labor market.

A college diploma no longer guarantees a job or a better shot at a stable paycheck. Since the Great Recession, the gap in unemployment rates between college graduates and those without degrees has been narrowing. Now, recent college graduates are actually more likely to be unemployed than the overall workforce.

Perhaps most striking: for six months in 2025, workers with an occupational associate’s degree in skilled trades — plumbers, electricians, pipe fitters — posted slightly better employment outcomes than college graduates. This marks the first time college graduates have lost their employment advantage since the federal government began tracking these data in the 1990s.

AI Is Threatening to Lock the Door From the Inside

As the labor market door swings shut on young people, artificial intelligence threatens to turn the deadbolt from the inside. AI-driven mass unemployment has not yet arrived — but early warning signs are flashing for workers at the start of their careers. A recent Stanford University study found that workers ages 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed occupations — software development, customer service — experienced a 13% drop in employment since 2022.

Even tech leaders are sounding the alarm. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out roughly half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years. Taken together, young workers without experience face outsized risk of labor market scarring — entering a workforce that is simultaneously contracting at the entry level and automating the roles that remain.

This uncertainty is weighing on young workers. The Conference Board finds that just 57% of workers under 25 report being satisfied with their jobs, compared to 72% for workers over 55. In a year marked by the fastest single-year gain in job satisfaction ever recorded, young workers were the only group whose satisfaction declined.

What Actually Needs to Change

Blaming Gen Z is easy. The data shows it’s also wrong. This generation is coming of age in a labor market that is less secure, less dynamic, and less predictable than the ones their parents entered — one where workplaces increasingly deploy surveillance technology and retirement benefits are eroding. What’s needed is not a lecture about work ethic. We need an economy that offers multiple, durable pathways to middle-class security.

We can reinvigorate the promise of a four-year degree while investing in apprenticeships, public service programs, and other proven on-ramps to stable employment. And as AI reshapes the workforce, policymakers must ensure that workers have a voice in how it’s deployed — and that the benefits it creates are broadly shared rather than concentrated among the few.

Gen Z is not unemployable. They are knocking on locked doors. The task before us is to reopen them — and to make sure that a shot at the middle class doesn’t become a relic of the past.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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