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You’ve probably heard the term ‘doomscrolling’, referring to the act of scrolling social media somewhat endlessly with no specific interest in the content. This is commonly associated with apps such as Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. However, it’s also used when discussing the ability to get overwhelmed and obsessed when looking at LinkedIn, for all its opportunity and potential is what so many people feel they desperately need.

The phrase ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ is potent to many industries such as publishing, journalism, business, tech and more. For ambitious and experience-hungry students and post-graduates, the pressure of an impressive CV looms closely.

A small micro-trend on TikTok sees creators detailing how they should have been applying for internships, studying, or creating connections when they were little instead of doing childhood activities. This is usually accompanied by a photo of the creator as a child, looking care-free and happy. Although these posts are a clear exaggeration of the need to prepare for the job hunt, it’s visible that there is a widely shared feeling of being behind and under-qualified meanwhile not having the time to change this.

As this trend suggests, working on your employability is a long-term investment. Yet, the anxious feelings surrounding getting a job also stem from how difficult the job market is at this time.

Reports from the University of Liverpool revealed that ‘the proportion of UK graduates who found work straight out of university fell by nearly 30% between those born in the late 70s to those a decade younger.’

Discourse online also shares that, because our dream jobs and its industries are oversaturated, people who have studied their passions end up working in service jobs that they’ve most likely done alongside their degrees. TikTok again hows the humour young people use to deal with these pressing issues, as creators make videos vocalising their sarcastic excitement of becoming a barista or waitress after their degree in the creative arts.

According to the Office of National Statistics, just 60.4% of graduates living in England aged 21-30 were in “high-skilled” work, while 26.4% of this group were in medium or low-skilled employment, and 5.5% were unemployed last year. Their quotes highlight the worry and defeat of young people, such as one young person commenting that the job market is like ‘throwing themselves up a wall’.

Fiona Wilkinson, an MA student at Manchester Met, struggled to get a part-time job for six months after graduating from her English Lit degree at Leeds Beckett. They said: “The publishing industry job market is definitely oversaturated. In terms of part-time jobs, they’re also oversaturated.” The constant rejection by service jobs that require no experience seems to be a widely shared experience for people, like Fiona, with first class degrees.

Olivia Gilbert, who graduated in 2021 and is now pursuing a masters says: “I still face rejection letter after rejection letter. Knowing that all my peers are struggling with the same thing just proves that there really is something wrong with the job market right now.”

This conceivable ‘cry for help’ from young people is not positively received by a portion of older generations. Similarly to conversations surrounding the house market, savings and independent living, some middle aged and elderly members of the public have expressed that young people are not as hard working as their generation had to be at a young age, and are therefore not seeing the same success. In defence of Gen-Z, the rhetoric that ‘people don’t want to work anymore’ has seemingly been used for the past decade. Whether older generations believe us or not, there is clear evidence that it is extremely difficult to step foot in a wide range of the working world.

So who’s to blame? It’s difficult to know why it feels as though there’s so much competition and too few jobs, but the UK statistics show this feeling is justified. According to Office for National Statistics, the estimated number of vacancies in October to December 2023 decreased by 49,000 from the amount in July to September 2023. Between April and June 2022, the estimated number of vacancies only decreased (as shown for their statistics for 2023). 

The fear of success is clearly a widely shared mental battle, with the knowledge of the tribulations to come heightening anxiousness around the topic for all. This traceable online discussion shows that students across the national are not alone in the hardships of building our futures. The question left for graduates is a hopeless wonder of when the job market will improve for aspiring, or perhaps desperate, new recruits.