Why so many young people cannot find work right now
I finished my course, sent out hundreds of applications, and every entry level posting wants two years of experience that entry level jobs are supposed to give you.
Short answer
Two things are happening at once. Youth unemployment has always run at roughly double the adult rate, in almost every country that measures it, and on top of that baseline the United States is in a hiring freeze rather than a firing wave: the layoff rate is below where it sat in 2019 while the hires rate has fallen lower than any full year since 2012. A certification cannot create a junior opening, and buying one is the wrong first move. It changes a screening outcome only where a specific employer has written a specific credential into a specific job requisition.
Youth unemployment in the United States was 8.5 percent in July 2026 against 4.1 percent for all workers aged 16 and over. In the European Union in June 2026 it was 15.5 percent against 6.0 percent overall. Globally the ILO modelled estimate for 2025 put it at 13.4 percent against 4.8 percent. That gap is not new and it is not about your generation. What is new is the shape of the American labour market underneath it: employers have almost stopped letting people go and have also almost stopped hiring, and a frozen market punishes anyone trying to get in far more than anyone already inside it.
The ratio is about two to one, and it always has been
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 as series LNS14024887. In July 2026 it read 8.5 percent. The rate for everyone aged 16 and over, series LNS14000000, read 4.1 percent the same month. That is a ratio of roughly two to one.
Eurostat reports the same shape at a higher level. In June 2026 the EU youth unemployment rate for people under 25 was 15.5 percent while the EU rate overall was 6.0 percent, a ratio closer to two and a half to one. About 2.99 million people under 25 were unemployed across the EU that month. The ILO modelled estimate published through the World Bank data API gives a global youth rate of 13.4 percent for 2025 against a total rate of 4.8 percent, a ratio of about 2.8 to one.
This matters for one practical reason. If you are 23 and reading a headline that says unemployment is 4.1 percent and low, you are reading a number that does not describe your position in the queue. Young workers have less tenure, are concentrated in industries that hire and shed quickly, and are competing for a smaller pool of jobs that accept no prior record. That structure existed before you graduated and will exist after the current cycle turns. It is a reason to plan differently, not a reason to conclude something is uniquely broken about you.
The mechanic nobody explains: hiring froze, firing did not
The headline unemployment rate tells you how many people are out of work. It tells you nothing about how many doors open each month. For that, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and its numbers explain why applications are disappearing into silence while the news says the labour market is fine.
The total nonfarm hires rate was 3.4 percent in June 2026. The annual average for 2025 was 3.32 percent, which is lower than any full calendar year since 2012. Over 2018 and 2019 the same measure averaged 3.85 and 3.87 percent. Roughly half a percentage point of the entire American workforce is no longer being hired each month compared with the last stretch of ordinary conditions.
Now look at the other side. The layoffs and discharges rate averaged 1.12 percent in 2025 against 1.21 percent in 2019. Employers are letting go of fewer people than before the pandemic. And the quits rate averaged 2.02 percent in 2025 against 2.32 percent in 2019, so fewer people are voluntarily leaving.
Those three numbers together describe a labour market where almost nobody moves. That is survivable if you already hold a job. It is punishing if you do not. Openings a junior candidate can actually win tend to appear when somebody leaves and the company replaces them, often with somebody cheaper and greener. When quits fall, that replacement is never posted. Treat that as a mechanism rather than a measured quantity: JOLTS publishes hires, quits and layoffs, but it does not publish what share of hires are backfills, and no primary source I could find does. The measured facts are the three rates. The mechanism is the plausible reading of them, and no certification touches either.
Since January 2021 a fresh degree has stopped protecting you
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York publishes a quarterly dataset on the labour market for recent college graduates, defined as people aged 22 to 27 holding a bachelor's degree or higher and not currently enrolled. The underlying series are downloadable as CSV files, so the figures below come from the published data rather than a summary of it.
In June 2026 the unemployment rate for recent graduates was 5.7 percent. For all workers it was 4.1 percent. For college graduates of all ages it was 2.9 percent. Read that ordering again: a recent graduate is now more likely to be unemployed than the average worker of any age or education level, while an established graduate is far less likely.
For most of the period this series covers, that ordering ran the other way. In the New York Fed file, the recent graduate rate has been above the all worker rate in every single month from January 2021 through June 2026, a run of 66 months.
Be accurate about what is new here, because the flip itself is not. The same file shows the recent graduate rate above the all worker rate for five months from October 2018 to February 2019, and for eleven consecutive months from May 2019 to March 2020, before the pandemic. Earlier crossings were shorter: one month in 2001, three months across the turn of 2015, one month in 2017. So the ordering had already started inverting before 2020. What is genuinely unprecedented in a file that begins in 1990 is the duration, 66 months without a single break, against a previous record of eleven.
Underemployment tells the same story. The New York Fed defines it as the share of graduates working in a job that typically does not require a degree. In June 2026 that was 42.0 percent for recent graduates against 33.7 percent for college graduates as a whole. Roughly two in five people who finished a degree in the last five years are working a job that never asked for one.
Tech majors sit near the top of the graduate unemployment table, but not at the top
The New York Fed also publishes recent graduate outcomes by college major, drawn from the 2024 American Community Survey and released in February 2026. The unemployment rate across all majors was 4.2 percent. The individual entries are worth sitting with.
The highest rate in the whole file is Anthropology at 7.9 percent, and Fine Arts is third at 7.7 percent, so the standard warning about those degrees was not baseless. What has changed is the company they now keep. Computer Engineering sits between them at 7.8 percent, and Computer Science is fourth at 7.0 percent. Physics recorded 6.6 percent, Architecture 6.8 percent, Art History 6.7 percent, Environmental Studies 6.3 percent and Information Systems and Management 6.0 percent. At the other end, Nursing recorded 2.1 percent unemployment and an underemployment rate of 12.8 percent, the lowest underemployment figure in the table. Elementary Education recorded 1.2 percent unemployment and Special Education 0.7 percent.
If you are 22 and were told at 17 to learn to code because that was where the safety was, the 2024 data does not support the safety half of that advice. Computer Science graduates in that file were marginally more likely to be unemployed than Art History graduates, 7.0 percent against 6.7 percent, a gap small enough that you should not build an argument on it. The pay gap is the part that is not marginal: a median early career wage of 87,000 dollars against 45,000 dollars.
Be careful about why. The dataset reports what happened, not the cause. Whether the tech figures reflect artificial intelligence, the post-2022 layoffs, an oversupply of graduates, or offshoring is genuinely contested and this post is not going to pretend otherwise. The usable conclusion is narrower and more reliable. Field level demand shifts faster than a four year degree can respond to it, so choosing a credential today on the basis of what the market wanted three years ago is a known way to arrive late. That applies to certifications as much as to degrees.
Skipping the degree does not fix it either
A common response to the numbers above is that the degree was a waste and the trades or direct entry would have been smarter. The same New York Fed file contains the test of that claim. It tracks young workers aged 22 to 27 who do not hold a bachelor's degree, on the same monthly basis and with the same definitions.
In June 2026 their unemployment rate was 7.2 percent. Recent graduates were at 5.7 percent. Young people without a degree were doing worse than young people with one, by a point and a half, in the same month, in the same economy.
So the degree is still buying something. It is buying less than it used to, later than it used to, and with a two in five chance of landing in a job that did not require it, but the alternative starting position is measurably harder rather than easier. Anyone telling you the degree itself was the mistake is arguing against the published series.
What this means for spending decisions is direct. If you already hold a degree, the case for buying a second general purpose credential to fix a problem the first one did not fix is weak. If you do not hold one and cannot afford one, a certification is a reasonable substitute in a narrow set of licensed and credential gated roles, and our page on using a certification instead of a degree sets out which ones those are and why the distinction between a legal gate and an employer signal decides whether your money does anything.
Britain counts the same problem under a different word
The Office for National Statistics publishes a quarterly bulletin on young people not in education, employment or training, abbreviated NEET. For April to June 2026 it recorded 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the UK who were NEET, or 13.0 percent of that age group. That is up 30,000 on the year and down 30,000 on the quarter, and the second half of that sentence gets dropped from most coverage. Among 18 to 24 year olds specifically the figure was 894,000, or 15.2 percent, up 17,000 on the year and down 33,000 on the quarter.
The internal split is the part worth understanding. Of those 981,000, an estimated 393,000 were unemployed, meaning available for work and actively looking. The other 588,000 were economically inactive, meaning not currently looking. Only the first group appears in the unemployment rate at all.
That gap explains why official unemployment statistics in any country understate what young people experience. Stopping applications after a long run of silence moves you out of the unemployment count and into the inactivity count, and nothing about your situation has improved. The ONS also warns explicitly that Labour Force Survey estimates for small subgroups like this one carry more volatility than the headline series, and advises focusing on longer term movements rather than quarter to quarter changes, so treat any single quarter's shift with caution.
If you have stopped applying, you are one of the 588,000 rather than one of the 393,000, and that is a statistical description rather than a judgement. It matters mainly because employment programmes, benefit conditions and jobcentre support are usually keyed to the actively looking category.
Where a named credential actually changes a screening outcome
Here is the narrow honest answer. A certification helps when a specific employer has written a specific credential into a specific requisition, and it does almost nothing otherwise.
The cases where that is genuinely true tend to look like this. Defence and government contractor cybersecurity roles in the United States where a credential is a condition of holding the position, which our page on whether Security+ alone gets you hired covers in detail. Managed service providers and internal IT help desks whose postings name CompTIA A+ by name. Consultancies and cloud partner firms that hold vendor partnership tiers and need a headcount of certified staff, where a fundamentals level certificate can make you cheaper to hire than an equivalent candidate without one. In each of these the credential is a box on a form somebody else has to tick, which is why it works.
Outside those cases, be sceptical, including of the claim that entry level postings almost all demand prior experience. No government statistical agency counts that. Every percentage in circulation comes from a sample of postings scraped by a job board or an analytics vendor, published as marketing rather than as official statistics. The pattern is real in your inbox. The specific number is not checkable.
One more piece of evidence, from a certifying body about its own programme. ISC2 ran One Million Certified in Cybersecurity, giving away free training and a free exam for its entry level CC credential. ISC2 states that more than a million people enrolled, more than 570,000 used the course, and more than 65,000 earned the certification. That is roughly one in fifteen enrollees finishing. The programme stopped new enrolments on 20 May 2026, and the CC exam now costs 199 US dollars with a 50 dollar annual maintenance fee on top. When a credential was free to a million young people, most of them did not complete it, and the ones who did entered a market where the credential was correspondingly common.
What to do with three months and two hundred pounds
Order matters more than choice here, because the cheapest actions have the highest return and most people do them last.
First, accept that the first job is not the target job. In a market with a 3.4 percent hires rate, the fastest route into the counted employed is a role adjacent to what you want, including temporary, contract, agency and seasonal work. Six months of any employment changes how a screener reads the gap on your CV. It also puts you inside a building where internal postings exist, and internal moves do not compete against the open applicant pool.
Second, work referrals rather than volume. Applications through an unfamiliar portal compete with everyone. A named person forwarding your CV competes with almost nobody. That means alumni lists, former lecturers, people two years ahead of you on the same course, and anybody you did unpaid or part time work for. This costs nothing and is the highest yield hour in the week.
Third, check who will pay before you pay. Jobcentre Plus and devolved skills funding in the UK, state workforce agencies and WIOA funded programmes in the United States, and employer sponsored apprenticeship schemes all fund exams for people who qualify. Our page on getting a certification paid for after a layoff walks through the same funding routes, most of which are open to first time jobseekers as well.
Only then, if a real posting you are qualified for names a credential, buy that credential. Microsoft states plainly that its fundamentals exam price varies by the country the exam is proctored in, so check the vendor page rather than a training site quoting a figure. Buying a certificate before you have a posting that asks for it converts scarce money into a line nobody screened for.
What this does not fix
This post does not claim that any certification will create a junior opening an employer has not budgeted for, and it does not estimate how much a credential raises your odds of getting an interview, because no primary source publishes that number. Two further limits are worth naming. The claim that junior openings are mostly backfills is a reading of the JOLTS hires, quits and layoffs rates, not a measured share, because JOLTS does not publish one. And the New York Fed data by major records what happened to 2024 graduates, not why, so it cannot tell you whether the tech figures reflect artificial intelligence, the post-2022 layoffs, graduate oversupply or offshoring. The figures here describe the labour market you are entering, not the return on any particular exam fee.
Where an exam fits
- CompTIA A+, if the help desk or IT support postings you are actually answering name CompTIA A+ in the requirements
- Certified in Cybersecurity (CC), if a cyber role you have already applied to lists CC, or an employer or funded programme is paying for it. The free route closed on 20 May 2026, so this is now 199 dollars plus 50 dollars a year out of your own pocket
- Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), if a named graduate scheme or apprenticeship you have applied to lists it as a prerequisite
- AWS Cloud Practitioner, if a posting you are in process for names it, or an employer has told you it is a condition of the offer. If you only want the vocabulary before an interview, read the free exam guide instead and keep the fee
- Google Cloud Digital Leader, if a Google Cloud partner firm has made you an offer or told you it needs certified headcount from you. If the firm trains on its own stack, it will normally pay, so ask before you buy
Common questions
Is youth unemployment actually worse than it used to be, or does it always look like this?
Both are true, and they are separate facts. The roughly two to one ratio between youth and adult unemployment is long standing and appears in the United States, the EU and the ILO global estimates alike. What has changed is the position of recent graduates specifically: in the New York Fed series their unemployment rate has stayed above the all worker rate for 66 straight months, January 2021 through June 2026. The flip itself is not new, and the file shows an eleven month run in 2019 and 2020 before the pandemic. The length of the current run is what has no precedent since the file begins in 1990.
If the unemployment rate is only 4.1 percent, why is nobody replying to my applications?
Because the unemployment rate measures the stock of people out of work, not the flow of people being hired. The US hires rate was 3.4 percent in June 2026 and averaged 3.32 percent across 2025, lower than any full year since 2012, while the layoff rate stayed below its 2019 level. Few people are being pushed out and few are being pulled in, which is comfortable for incumbents and hostile to new entrants.
Was studying computer science a mistake?
Not on this evidence. The 2024 New York Fed data by major puts Computer Science recent graduates at 7.0 percent unemployment and Computer Engineering at 7.8 percent, against 4.2 percent across all majors, so they are harder to place than average. But the top of that table is Anthropology at 7.9 percent and Fine Arts at 7.7 percent, so tech is near the top rather than at it. Computer Science also shows a median early career wage of 87,000 dollars against 58,000 dollars overall. Harder to place, better paid once placed. The cause of the unemployment figure is contested and the dataset does not settle it.
Should I buy a certification while I am job hunting?
Only if a real posting you are otherwise qualified for names that credential in its requirements. Certifications work as a screening filter in defence contractor cyber roles, in help desk postings that name CompTIA A+, and at vendor partner firms that need certified headcount. Outside those, a certificate does not create an opening, and the money is better spent on the months of runway you need to keep applying.
Would skipping university have been better?
The published numbers say no. In June 2026 the New York Fed recorded 7.2 percent unemployment among young workers aged 22 to 27 without a bachelor's degree, against 5.7 percent for recent graduates the same month. The degree is buying less than it did and 42 percent of recent graduates are in jobs that did not require one, but the no degree starting position is measurably harder.
Is it true that most entry level jobs demand prior experience?
The pattern is real in job postings but the specific percentages in circulation are not checkable at any primary source. No national statistical agency counts how many postings labelled entry level require prior experience. Every figure quoted for this comes from a job board or analytics firm sampling its own listings and publishing the result as marketing, so treat any confident number with suspicion.
What counts as NEET and does it matter for me?
In the UK, NEET means not in education, employment or training, and the ONS recorded 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 in that position in April to June 2026, up 30,000 on the year but down 30,000 on the quarter. Of those, 393,000 were unemployed and actively looking while 588,000 were economically inactive. The split matters because jobcentre support, benefit conditions and employment programmes are usually keyed to the actively looking category. The ONS itself warns that this subgroup is volatile, so read the level rather than the quarterly wobble.
What is the single highest value thing I can do this week for free?
Ask a named person to forward your CV. Applications through an open portal compete with the entire applicant pool, while a referral competes with almost nobody, and in a market with a 3.4 percent hires rate the number of open competitions is the binding constraint. Alumni networks, former lecturers, and people one or two years ahead of you on the same course are the cheapest routes to that.
Sources
- 01US unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, ages 16 to 24, July 2026 8.5 percent
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, series LNS14024887 checked 2026-08-28 - 02US unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, all workers aged 16 and over, July 2026 4.1 percent
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, series LNS14000000 checked 2026-08-28 - 03EU youth unemployment rate for people under 25 in June 2026, against the overall EU rate of 6.0 percent, with 2.99 million young people unemployed 15.5 percent youth, 6.0 percent overall
Eurostat, Unemployment statistics checked 2026-08-28 - 04Global youth unemployment rate, ages 15 to 24, 2025 modelled ILO estimate, against a total unemployment rate of 4.79 percent 13.41 percent youth, 4.79 percent total
World Bank open data API, indicators SL.UEM.1524.ZS and SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS, modelled ILO estimate checked 2026-08-28 - 05US total nonfarm hires rate, seasonally adjusted, June 2026, with a 2025 annual average of 3.32 percent, lower than any full calendar year since 2012, against averages of 3.85 percent in 2018 and 3.87 percent in 2019 3.4 percent in June 2026; annual averages 3.317 percent 2025, 3.417 percent 2024, 3.308 percent 2012
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, series JTS000000000000000HIR checked 2026-08-28 - 06US total nonfarm layoffs and discharges rate, annual average 2025 against 2019 1.12 percent in 2025, 1.21 percent in 2019
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, series JTS000000000000000LDR checked 2026-08-28 - 07US total nonfarm quits rate, annual average 2025 against 2019 2.02 percent in 2025, 2.32 percent in 2019
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, series JTS000000000000000QUR checked 2026-08-28 - 08June 2026 unemployment rates from the New York Fed college labour market series: recent college graduates aged 22 to 27, all workers, college graduates of all ages, and young workers aged 22 to 27 without a bachelor's degree. Also the length of the run in which the recent graduate rate exceeds the all worker rate, and the longest prior runs in a file beginning January 1990 5.70 percent recent graduates, 4.06 percent all workers, 2.86 percent college graduates, 7.19 percent young workers without a degree; recent graduate rate above the all worker rate for 66 consecutive months, January 2021 through June 2026; longest prior runs eleven months May 2019 to March 2020 and five months October 2018 to February 2019
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, unemployment data file checked 2026-08-28 - 09Underemployment rate in June 2026, defined as the share working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree, for recent graduates against all college graduates 41.95 percent recent graduates, 33.73 percent all college graduates
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, underemployment data file checked 2026-08-28 - 10Recent college graduate unemployment rates by major, 2024 American Community Survey data released February 2026, plus underemployment and median early career wages unemployment 4.2 percent all majors; highest in file Anthropology 7.9 percent, Computer Engineering 7.8 percent, Fine Arts 7.7 percent, Computer Science 7.0 percent, Performing Arts 7.0 percent, Architecture 6.8 percent, Art History 6.7 percent, Physics 6.6 percent, Environmental Studies 6.3 percent, Information Systems and Management 6.0 percent; Nursing 2.1 percent, Elementary Education 1.2 percent, Special Education 0.7 percent; Nursing underemployment 12.8 percent, the lowest in the table; median early career wages 90,000 dollars Computer Engineering, 87,000 dollars Computer Science, 45,000 dollars Art History, 58,000 dollars all majors
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, outcomes by major data file checked 2026-08-28 - 11UK young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training, April to June 2026, split between unemployed and economically inactive 981,000 total aged 16 to 24, 13.0 percent of the age group and up 30,000 on the year, of whom 393,000 unemployed and 588,000 economically inactive; 894,000 aged 18 to 24, or 15.2 percent
Office for National Statistics, Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), August 2026 bulletin checked 2026-08-28 - 12ISC2 One Million Certified in Cybersecurity programme outcomes and closure, plus the current paid price of the CC exam more than 1 million enrolled, more than 570,000 used the course, more than 65,000 earned the certification; new enrolments ended 20 May 2026; exam now 199 US dollars plus a 50 dollar annual maintenance fee
ISC2, One Million Certified in Cybersecurity programme page checked 2026-08-28
Related
I crossed the six-month line, I have started fudging the dates on my resume, and I am starting to believe I am permanently damaged goods.
I think a robot is deleting my resume before a human ever sees it, and I want to know if a certification would stop that.
I do not have a degree and cannot afford one, and I cannot tell which certifications are real qualifications and which are expensive decoration.
I passed Security+, I have sent more than a hundred applications, and I have not had one interview.