Transcription
I'm 22 years old, about to get a physics degree, and you will never guess the types of jobs that I am applying to right now. Um, it's actually a travesty.
>> How many jobs would you say you applied to overall?
>> I would say thousands, maybe. Yeah, thousands.
>> A lot of. Yeah.
>> The job market is horrible right now.
All right, so we're getting close to about halfway through the year already. So, I thought we should take a look at the job market in 2026. I don't think it will come as a surprise, but it's not doing great. I'm just going to let all the experiences we're going to see today tell you what's happening out there because we have a ton of stuff to go over today, along with comments from you guys from previous videos. So, if you want to be featured on a future video, leave in the comments down below. But, let's just jump right into it.
The job market is horrible right now. And I come to that conclusion from a little bit of a different perspective because I've been an employment law attorney for the last 15 years, which means on a weekly basis, I speak with dozens of people who have been fired or laid off. Some of these people are really good workers, some are not. So, all different ends of the spectrum. And these days, what I notice from talking to people, right? This isn't based on just data, which we can all access, but talking to people, they're not bouncing back as fast as they used to into new jobs. Many of these people have been unemployed for a long period of time, months, even years. Um, and not only that, but also mindsets. People are just in really bad places, not thinking they're going to get a job, incredibly disillusioned. So, mindset is such a big piece, too. So, of course, I hope this changes, but based on everything I'm seeing, talking to people on a daily basis, it's not good. And I just don't see it getting better anytime soon.
>> And I feel like this has been the sentiment for years now. And we're getting around to the time of the year where most people are graduating from college. So we could take a look at what they're seeing now.
>> How many jobs would you say you applied to overall?
>> I would say thousands, maybe. Yeah.
>> Thousands.
>> A lot of. Yeah.
>> Probably like 40, 50s.
>> I think I have applied to at least, at least like 700 jobs.
>> Definitely over 100.
>> Approximately, I would say 500, 600 jobs for sure. Yeah.
>> Over 100, if I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah.
>> I think over like 600 for sure. Last summer I applied to over 300 jobs, and it seems like a big number, but I also know people who also had the same experience of applying to hundreds of jobs. And, you know, it's pretty difficult because sometimes we get, we just get outright, um, filtered by AI, or, you know, we get told to tailor our cover letters, our resume, but it's still not enough, though. Or sometimes I even had someone that I had applied to, or a job that I applied to last summer, just get back to me like a few weeks back, telling me that they weren't looking for anybody anymore.
And if you've seen the series that I've made on this channel talking about job listings and demands, there are countless examples of exactly that. We'll also be going over the current application process along with AI a little bit later in the video, but we got a comment from you guys right here. I remember not even 10 years ago being told in college, "I needed a computer science degree," and now I just see layoffs and layoffs. We've gone over this a few times before. Everybody was talking about getting a computer science degree. Computers of the future. And now, fast forward to 2026. It looks like AI is taking a majority of those jobs. So now you have to get good enough grades to be accepted into a college, get into an absolute massive amount of student loan debt, and then hope your degree doesn't get swallowed whole by advancing technology. It's not really surprising to me when we start seeing videos like this.
>> Why are younger Americans feeling so negative?
>> This is a tough labor market. And by the way, the, the change has been pretty dramatic just in two years. So, two years ago, in this survey, we found that 70% of the young people were optimistic. Now it's 43%. What a huge drop. The labor market has gotten a lot tighter. It's become a much more difficult environment to break through. And I think it's also interesting is the contrast between those 55 and older, because what we know is that people 55 and older, if they're lucky enough to have a job, they seem to be staying in those jobs. So, I feel bad for these kids. They are actually approaching a market that's very difficult.
On one end, you've got the 82-year-old that can't afford to stop working. And then on the other end, you have what Elon Musk calls a supersonic tsunami of AI coming to wipe out an entire category of entry-level jobs. So, we may actually end up with the worst of both worlds here. You've got a group, uh, an older group that can't afford to retire, and you've got a younger group that can't get the jobs in order to save for retirement. And that's what we've gone over a few times with the retirement videos on this channel as well. If they're having difficulty right now, what does that mean for all of the future generations in 30 or 40 years? I won't get into that in this video, but that means there are less jobs to go around. And you could add on that so many entry-level jobs are disappearing because of AI. Now, my thought process immediately after that is whenever the older generation does stop working, either they have enough money to actually retire, or they just pass away from old age, you're not going to have enough people to fill their shoes eventually, because it seems like every company wants somebody with 10 plus years of experience. But if they can't get their foot in the door in the first place when they graduate college, how are they ever going to get that experience? This all seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Last week, my dad forwarded me a story that he saw in the Wall Street Journal where they talked about how much money OpenAI is paying its employees. I know this. You know this. We all know this. It's new information for Mark. He forwards me the story and says, "Maybe you should look into OpenAI." Sent from my iPhone. Brilliant. Calls me today. He's like, "Emily, did you get my email?" And I was like, "I did." He was like, "What about OpenAI? Have you tried OpenAI?" And I was like, "I did. I did try it." Um, I actually tried it through a direct referral, which, you know, and I know is pretty much the best bet, the best avenue you can take right now. He doesn't know that, though. He says, "Emily, I think you should put together a packet to market yourself." I say to him, "I don't really know what you mean by that, but I do have a website and I am active on LinkedIn." He doesn't know what any of that means. I might as well be speaking Mandarin.
Going straight over to the comment section. "Have you tried starting in the mail room? Just take your resume there and drop it off. Have you thought about becoming their CEO?" And my dad is in his 60s and got laid off from a high-level consultancy in tech. He literally had never applied for a job since the early '90s. Trying to explain the job market kind of broke him. It is a completely different world in 2026.
>> I'm on the verge of crashing out again. This is what, like my fourth or fifth crash out in the last 7 months. I just did five interviews with a company, and I thought I had it in the bag. There was still one more step after this, and I just got an email from the recruiter saying that I wasn't moving forward with them, but she's happy to meet with me to go over feedback, which is the first time in 7 months a recruiter has offered to actually give me feedback. I've had to either beg for it, ask for it, and get ghosted, or just like something so vague. So, I'm hoping that she does actually follow through with this. But I can't believe I'm at the point where I have almost no money. Actually, no money, because I won't have money in the few weeks. Um, I will be done with my unemployment. I am moving out of my apartment that I've been in for 4 years. Um, my cat will have to go to my sister's house that's 4 hours away. And me and my dog are going to live in a friend's spare bedroom, which I'm grateful for, don't get me wrong, but it's one of those things where I can't. I, I'm so done.
>> I was laid off 2 months ago after being unemployed for 7 months last year, and then only getting a low-paying job for 6 and a half months before I was laid off again. I empathize hard. I have no money left. My credit is tanking, and I've never felt so defeated. I have a bachelor's, master's, and 10 plus years of experience. So, what does that mean for all the people just getting out of college now?
>> I like when people say, "If you don't want to end up working at Walmart or McDonald's, go to college." Yet, they graduate college with a lot of debt and still end up working those minimum wage jobs.
>> If you're having a bad day, just know that I woke up this morning at 7:30 in the morning to two back-to-back rejection emails after six rounds of interviews because they both hired internally.
>> I'm excited to announce that I have accepted a job for $18 an hour at my local dive bar. I graduated from Yale with a 3.8 GPA and have a master's in finance.
>> I just got denied a job from Target. I have a bachelor's degree. I spent four years on a bachelor's degree. And then my parents, in great old America, told me, "Go get your master's degree because that will absolutely solidify you a job." I can't get a cashier's job. I got rejected for a job because I was unemployed with over 400,000 likes on that comment. And as crazy as that sounds, we've heard that before. Companies were only looking for people that were currently employed to cherry-pick them. I guess their thought process is if you're unemployed, there's something wrong with you. But overall, just makes this entire situation worse. You're overqualified. Isn't that good? With almost half a million likes, everyone's hiring, yet no one's hiring. You have no experience. Yes, because no one will let me. And there are a lot more examples like what's on screen. "Excited to announce I've accepted a job paying $18 an hour in retail. I graduated from Dartmouth with a 3.8 GPA and have a master's in finance." "2025 career wrapped with another graduate. 600 plus applications. 400 ghosted me. 200, we're sorry to inform you, so you got rejected. 100 cover letters. 10 interviews. One kind of offer, but they ghosted me because they ran out of funding. 20 different resumes. 15 email refreshes a day. And 10 times that I said, 'This is the one, 100%.' Losing my mind."
And we got another comment from you guys here. "I don't think people understand how much it sucks. I am way, way overqualified for jobs I'm applying for, and I'm not even getting interviews for them. 20 plus years of experience, military vet, degree, certificates, references, and nothing." And when you start taking a look at the even younger generations before getting into college, they're going to be in for a rude awakening.
How much do you think the average American makes a year?
>> I'm going to say like 200. No, not 200. Like 130.
>> 130k.
>> 130k.
>> Yeah, I agree.
>> You agree? How much do you think the average American makes a year?
>> Maybe like 100k.
>> Okay.
>> Maybe like 80k.
>> All right. How much do you think the average American makes a year?
>> Like 400k.
>> All right. So, like a little under 500k. A little under half a mill.
>> Yeah. How much do you guys think the average American makes a year?
>> Like 250,000.
>> Yeah, that's pretty valid. 250k.
>> How much do you think that the average American makes a year?
>> 110,000.
>> 250,000.
>> Like 800,000.
>> Okay.
>> Probably like, like 5,000.
>> Okay.
Those are very different answers. Why 800,000?
>> Well, because like that's like how much like...
>> Like rent is.
>> Okay. So, I know most of my viewership is around 25 and older, but this is why I think it's super important to look at these topics we go over on this channel as young as possible because the real world is much different than most of these kids think. Going over to the comment section, "They're going to be very disappointed with their first job. Then, these kids are going to know real soon when they start. The crazy part is the girl who said $5,000 is closer than anyone else in this video, and reality is going to be a slap in the face for all of them. I wish I watched these types of videos when I was younger as well. I was told by my teachers all I had to do is get good grades, go to a school, get a nice degree, and it'd be that easy to make a hundred plus thousand dollars a year, and it's just not."
This was me 5 months ago when I was unexpectedly laid off from my job. And while I wish this was a happy update video, it's not. And I don't think people realize how bad the job market is right now. I'm the type of person who keeps track of everything. So, I documented every single job application that I filed, where it came from, and how it went. So, let's go. Starting with LinkedIn, I've applied to 124 jobs. Indeed, I applied to 36 jobs. And directly to their website, whatever company it was, I've applied to 51 jobs, which brings us to a total of 211 jobs that I've applied to in the last five months. That's insane. And out of those 211 jobs, I've gotten eight interviews. Doesn't seem like a lot at all. And from those eight interviews, I've had two move on past the third round. And since I'm making this video, I'm sure you can guess that I didn't get either of those jobs. I've applied to over 400 jobs and only got three interviews in 4 months. Finally got a job getting paid $18 an hour. I used to make $45 an hour. I almost got evicted twice. I still don't know how I'm going to pay next month's rent, can't pay my car payment, and I'm losing my mind. And there's another person saying that I've applied for 2,000 jobs and three interviews.
And that brings AI into the conversation when it comes to the application process. I don't think the guy in the video used AI for their applications. Even though 200 is still a lot, it doesn't seem that crazy for 5 months of looking. But throwing out numbers like 200, or at the beginning of the video, we were hearing 600, 700 applications. A lot of people are using automation to apply for virtually everything. And I think it's making things much harder.
>> So, AI has actually ruined hiring, but not in the ways that you think. And honestly, I think in 2026, things are going to get a lot harder for job seekers. The first thing you need to know is that companies are freaking out about fraudulent candidates. Like, for certain roles, like remote engineering jobs, they're estimating that somewhere like 25 to 30% of applicants are actually fake. And then on top of that, because so many people are using AI in their application processes, it's actually hard to distinguish between the fake candidates and the real ones. So, if you're a job seeker in 2026, I think you need to be prepared for a couple of things. So, one, companies are going to make it harder for you to apply. That could be more application questions. It could be asking you to upload some sort of video so they can try to start figuring out who's real. It could be asking you to do an AI interview or one-way video interview before you actually talk to a human so that they can try to suss out the people who are fake. Two, everyone freaks out about this hidden job market, thinking that a lot of jobs aren't posted. And I've always said that's not true. But honestly, in 2026, I think more and more companies are going to shy away from posting jobs and they're just going to rely on referrals, on sourcing, on their networks because applications are now becoming a time suck.
>> So, what I'm hearing is that more and more jobs are not even going to be listed online. You have to know someone to even be considered. And then any of the postings that you do see on the internet are going to become even more ridiculous. All while you have to worry about those same listings being complete scams just taking your data.
>> You know, it's a scam that nobody talks about enough. The fact that when you apply for an apartment, um, or a job, um, there's a strong correlation between, like, there's often a strong correlation, is what I should say. Often, allegedly, often, a strong correlation between applying and getting a million spam calls about 2 days later. I know they're selling my information. I just can't prove it.
>> I don't know about you, but I still get texts and emails all the time talking about fake jobs. I know in the end, it's a complete scam, and they're trying to take your banking information or something like that. But I've legitimately gotten consistent messages about that for years.
And we got another comment from you guys. "My company's been slowly developing a software that replaces my entire team. We have to go to work every day and watch it replace us. And we eventually all get laid off in 2 to 3 months. It feels surreal." And that's a very good transition into the next clip.
>> Meta is now tracking employee activity and keystrokes to train its internal AI, basically trying to train a model to replace all of the employees' jobs. The new employee tracking tool called MCI allows Meta to observe and collect data on all employee laptops. They also announced that they are cutting 10% of their workforce, or 8,000 jobs, starting May 20th. Employee tracking tools have always been a thing, and the smarter people will know that there's tons of automations that allow you to trick these things. However, now it's not just to make sure that you're working, it's also to gather data on you so that they can replace you. And just like a ton of other examples we've talked about, like subscriptions and cars, all it takes is one company to start it, and then everybody else starts copying. Maybe it'll take a few years, but this will affect every company that uses computers, which is virtually all of them. And you think the layoffs are bad now? I can't even imagine down the road.
And we got another comment here. "Remember when mass layoffs were a sign of failing businesses? Now it's just a way to cut costs and have robots do the job." I will say though, one thing that people messed up pretty heavily a few years ago were all those work-from-home gigs.
>> Yeah. To the people who made those work-from-home videos and they was doing nothing. I'll never forgive you.
>> It's really crazy how this generation fumbled remote work. Bro, how did we fumble this? Actually, I know how we fumbled this. Oh, yeah. I remember how people fumbled. They got on here talking about, "Oh yeah, I only work for like three hours, then I go sit at the coffee shop, and then I go to Vegas, and then I come back." Like, it was just crazy. People were just doing a lot of self-snitching. But I'm not going to lie, I do not know how we fumbled remote work. Most of the jobs that I know now are either hybrid again, or some are like fully back in the office. And it's like, how did people fumble that great of an opportunity to be able to work from home five days a week? I do not know how.
>> It's these damn phones. People think they got to post everything. Isn't that the truth? And everything's not for the internet. Talking too much. Always our biggest downfall. But I will say it's not 100% the reason why all these work-from-home jobs went back into the office. A lot of the time, it was just a way to lay off someone without actually laying them off. You tell all of your employees during COVID that you could work anywhere in the country. It doesn't matter. They end up moving far away to a lower cost of living area. And then a few years later, you say, "Oh, never mind. We actually all need you back in the office." While the prices of all homes have skyrocketed, and you can't move back. And then, unfortunately, you have to deal with this horrendous job market.
I'm 22 years old, about to get a physics degree, and you will never guess the types of jobs that I am applying to right now. Um, it's actually a travesty. I think I've learned a lot of life skills as a physics major, but without a PhD, my degree is practically useless because, um, applying to jobs with a physics background, those jobs do not care. Uh, they want you to have like seven years of experience. Uh, it's, it's, it's pretty bad. So, um, I'm just currently figuring out what the hell I'm going to do. Maybe I travel around the country and just document my life for the next 10 years. Uh, maybe I just record TikToks for the next 10 years. Who knows? Maybe I'll get into acting or comedy. Um, that, that would be terrible. That would be probably just as bad. Actually.
>> Going straight over to the comments. "Do you not want that PhD? You wouldn't have to pay a penny for that degree. You would get supported with teaching and research assistantships all 5 years." But then the creator responds, "I tried for a PhD and I got rejected." So, even a physics degree that is very difficult to get and most people would think you'd make a ton of money is just not working out for him either.
And even though obviously most of the clips on this channel are from the US, this is still happening all over the world as well.
>> I applied for about 50, 60 positions.
>> Over 100 jobs.
>> Maybe 200.
>> It took me, you know, months, definitely like maybe nearly even a year to find a job that that worked for me. So many just ignored applications, you don't even get a response. It's like disrespect. But...
>> There was 600 people in my year alone. They don't need 600 psychologists, let alone like every uni that does that. And I imagine that's the same for lots of jobs.
>> I was probably applying for 10 or 15 jobs a day. I was on job seekers for a while, and then I found a software engineering job.
>> Reach out, and they'd be like, "Oh, we're already internally filling this role." So, it's kind of just there as an ad. It's about the time and the luckiness.
>> You just go for them all and hope that one comes back. Okay.
So, that's all you're supposed to hope for, I guess, in 2026. Again, after racking up a ton of student debt, because college is not cheap. And we got an interesting comment here. "This is why college is important. Getting jobs is all about relationships. Every job I've ever gotten was through an internal reference from someone I went to college with." So, you're supposed to be paying $30, $40, $50,000 a year for the networking and just hoping you could find somebody that can get you an in at a company. This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me.
But that's all I got for you guys today. Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below. YouTube thinks you'll like this video popping up on screen right now, but hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, please leave a like, and I'll talk to you guys.