Here’s how to not lose your mind when applying for jobs

Helen Coffey, The Independent

That is what I wish to offer our beleaguered Gen Zs in this, their time of need. The culture wars often seek to divide my kind (millennials) from yours (genuine young people), but we shall be divided no longer. For now, finally, we really do have common ground that binds us: getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to finding gainful employment. In 2008, I proudly graduated from university with a first-class degree — admittedly in drama — and big dreams, ready to take my bite out of the big, wide world. Finding a job would be child’s play, I assumed; I had an exemplary academic record, a “can-do” attitude and a CV filled with real-world work experience thanks to an assortment of term-time and holiday jobs. I was young, I was hungry, I was an asset. Wasn’t I?

Alas, 2008, if you remember that fateful year, coincided with the global financial crash. It was not a good time to be an unskilled 21-year-old looking for a job, to put it mildly. Between 2008 and 2009, UK unemployment skyrocketed by the steepest jump in any 12-month period of the last 30 years, leaping from 5.71 to 7.63 per cent. The rate rose for the following two years, reaching a high of just over 8 per cent in 2011. This was borne out by my futile job hunt, during which I was forced to move home with my mother, sign on to jobseekers allowance and spend every tedious, drudge of a day for the next four months submitting my CV for entry-level roles that had already attracted thousands of applications. It was like the Hunger Games of job seeking – and the odds were never in my favour. They were never in anyone’s favour.

Cut to 2025, and Gen Z are facing their own job drought. The numbers may not be quite so dire as those during that extra spicy Noughties recession, but they paint a picture that is, nevertheless, hauntingly familiar in its bleakness. According to newly released official numbers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK unemployment has risen to its highest rate in four years, 4.7 per cent. The data also shows that the number of job vacancies fell to 727,000 for the April to June period. That is the lowest it’s been for a decade — including during pandemic lockdown periods when businesses were forced to implement literal hiring freezes. Of course, the demographic usually most affected by any downturn in prospects is young people – those just starting out in their careers, attempting to get full-time work straight out of school, college or university. In June, The Guardian reported that graduates are facing the toughest UK job market since 2018.

What’s exacerbated the situation for this cohort is AI; since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the number of entry-level jobs has fallen by almost a third (31.9 per cent). It’s in part thought to be because junior roles, such as data entry and tedious form filling, could easily be mopped up by artificial intelligence programmes. The big cheeses aren’t even denying it. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of AI firm Anthropic, recently claimed that AI could wipe out up to half all entry-level jobs in as little as five years, and argued that UK unemployment could rise to 10 or 20 per cent in that time; another AI company’s viral advertising campaign recently got people’s backs up with punchy slogans such as “Stop hiring humans”. And there are already real-world consequences: BT announced in 2023 that it expects 10,000 jobs to be lost to artificial intelligence by the end of this decade. Then there are rising labour costs, with employers squeezed even more by increased national insurance contributions and a higher minimum wage. Slashing headcounts is clearly the quickest and easiest way to ride out such rises. In fact, the ONS data reveals that the number of people on PAYE payroll has fallen in seven of the eight months since Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced the NICs rise.

But behind all the stats are those affected by them, real people who are more than just numbers or faceless “candidates”. I’ve already seen numerous personal stories of young people frantically scrambling to find work to no avail, up against hundreds of rival candidates, with little hope that their CV will be glanced at, let alone bag them an interview.

Caitlin Morgan, a 23-year-old finance and accounting graduate from Swansea University, recently told the BBC about her nightmarish job hunt. She’d spent 18 months applying for more than 600 posts before she finally got hired. “I see you, Caitlin Morgan!” I wanted to tell her upon reading the story. “I know your pain...”

In fact, I see all you poor, exhausted, desperate Gen Z job hunters out there, wondering if you’ll ever win the “lottery” — because that’s what it feels like — of merely securing full-time work. I see you because that was my origin story, too. So here’s my advice, woefully out-of-date and toothless as it may be 17 years down the track: remember, it’s not you. It’s the economy.