About 58% of students who graduated within the last year are still looking for their first job, according to a recent report from Kickresume. 

Meanwhile, just 25% of graduates in previous years—such as their millennial and Gen X predecessors—struggled to land work after college.

It may be tempting to think Gen Z just isn’t as hungry for work as previous generations, like Whoopi Goldberg and Judge Judy espouse. However, the study suggests that previous generations really could walk straight into a job much more easily than young people today.

In fact, nearly 40% of previous graduates managed to secure full-time work in time for their graduation ceremony—but just 12% of recent Gen Z grads can say the same, making these young job hunters three times less likely to have something lined up out of school. 

“The journey from classroom to career has never been straightforward,” the researchers wrote. “But it’s clear that today’s graduates are entering a job market that’s more uncertain, more digital, and arguably more demanding than ever.” 

Today’s young job-seekers are up against AI agents and a tightening white-collar job market—to the point where they’re handing in donuts and waitressing to try and jump-start their careers in unconventional ways. 

Today’s tough job market driving four million Gen Z into NEET status

It’s no secret that landing a job in today’s labor market requires more than a fine-tuned résumé and cover letter. Employers are putting new hires through bizarre lunch tests and personality quizzes to even consider them for a role.  

It’s undeniably a tough job market for many white-collar workers—about 20% of job-seekers have been searching for work for at least 10 to 12 months, and last year around 40% of unemployed people said they didn’t land a single job interview in 2024. It’s become so bad that hunting for a role has become a nine-to-five gig for many, as the strategy has become a numbers game—with young professionals sending in as many as 1,700 applicants to no avail.  And with the advent of AI, the hiring process has become an all-out tech battle between managers and applicants. 

Part of this issue may stem from technology whittling down the number of entry-level roles for Gen Z graduates; as chatbots and AI agents take over junior staffers’ mundane job tasks, companies need fewer staffers to meet their goals. 

Skyrocketing tuition costs and a bleak white-collar job market have made Gen Z’s situation so bad that 4.3 million young people are now NEETs: not in education, employment, or training. And while things look tough in America, it’s become an international issue, with the number of NEETs in the U.K. rising 100,000 over the past year alone. The age-old promise that a college degree will funnel new graduates into full-time roles has been broken.

“Universities aren’t deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise,” Lewis Maleh, CEO of staffing and recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, told Fortune.

The Kickresume researchers advise young people to just get on the career ladder as soon as possible, instead of holding out for that dream job in their field of study: “We often tell graduates not to stress too much about their first job. It’s just a starting point, not a life sentence.” 

Young people are desperately chasing jobs with donuts and waitressing gigs

While baby boomers may have chased a job by walking into an office and handing over their résumés directly to a hiring manager, Gen Z are having to get crafty to gain employers’ attention.

One young Silicon Valley marketing hopeful, Lukas Yla, knew he wouldn’t get far handing over his cover letter in-person, so he hatched a plan. When he was 25, the job-seeker posed as a delivery driver, handing over boxes of donuts with a secret memo attached on the inside. The note read “Most resumes end up in trash. Mine—in your belly,” along with his résumé and LinkedIn profile. He won over some employers, landing at least 10 interviews from the stunt. 

Another Gen Z job-seeker took to waitressing at a marketing conference after failing to land a job through traditional methods for six months. Basant Shenouda couldn’t find work after graduating from a top university in Germany, so she volunteered to clean up glasses at one of the most well-known marketing and sales events in the country. 

During her breaks, she’d float her CV by at least 30 to 40 people, asking for feedback, but hoping for an opportunity. Shortly thereafter, she landed a job at LinkedIn. 

“When you’re a graduate, you think everyone’s going to say yes to you and things are going [to] work out. But it’s a matter of building up resilience,” Shenouda told Fortune. “You need to keep reassessing your process so that every no gets you closer to that next yes.”