Gen Z is facing a career apocalypse

Throughout his college studies, Ryan Kim always had a postgraduation game plan. First it was to become a database manager. Then it was to break into fintech as a business analyst. But during his sophomore and junior years, as the tech industry laid off nearly half a million workers, Kim struggled to secure an internship. So he set his eyes on a new career: public service.

Kim was far from the only Gen Zer making the same pivot. Last year, according to the job site Handshake, the share of applications it received from college seniors for entry-level openings in tech dropped by 19% from 2022, while the share to jobs in government nearly doubled. Even younger kids saw the writing on the wall. In surveys, high school students used to cite tech giants like Google and Apple as the places they most wanted to work. But last year, in a startling shift, both the FBI and NASA ranked higher than any of those tech companies. Silicon Valley was out. Capitol Hill was in.

It took Kim only a single application to land a yearlong paid internship at the Food and Drug Administration. His performance reviews were good, and he planned to stay on at the agency after he earned his degree in May. "You hear so many horror stories of people in tech being laid off with little notice," he tells me. "Government jobs are secure. What drew me into it was the stability."

So much for that plan.

This month, with his graduation fast approaching, Kim abruptly lost his internship amid the government-wide havoc Elon Musk has unleashed at DOGE. With most federal hiring on an indefinite hold, he's been scrambling to find a job — any job. "It's been a huge source of stress," he says. "Most of the private industry has already hired their graduating students."

Kim is one of the roughly 2 million students set to graduate this spring into an exceptionally shaky job market. Things were already looking tough for the class of 2025, given the steep hiring slump in industries like tech, finance, and consulting. But now, as Musk takes a chainsaw to the government, many college seniors are in panic mode. Some have seen their offers at federal agencies rescinded; others have received no word on jobs they applied to months ago.

It's not just government positions that are taking a hit — it's jobs at a whole host of businesses, nonprofits, and universities that rely on federal funding and contracts. And going to graduate school — the traditional backup plan for students during times of economic instability — may not even be an option, if the Department of Education winds up being unable to deliver financial aid in a timely fashion. As the government is slashed to the bone in the name of efficiency, the careers of many Gen Zers could suffer for years to come.

"The impact is broad scale," says Saskia Campbell, the executive director of university career services at George Mason University. "There is this sense of grief, of loss of opportunity. This is the first year I'm actually concerned."

To make matters worse, the outlook is likely to get even more dismal in the months ahead, as President Donald Trump's tariff wars spur companies to hold off on hiring. "Two years ago, the bulk of the uncertainty and fear was in Big Tech," says Briana Randall, the executive director of the career and internship center at the University of Washington. "Now it feels uncertain in a lot of areas."

All of that leaves America's soon-to-be new grads unsure of where to turn. Sarina Parsapasand, a public policy major who's graduating from the University of Southern California this spring, was hoping to land a job in government service. But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's switched to trying to land a job in the private sector. "I have bills to pay," she says. "I can't take the risk of being in a job that doesn't guarantee the stability for me to live my life."

It's a sentiment I hear over and over again from the students I speak with. "The job market just seems super unstable in almost any field," says Katie Schwartz, a sophomore at Tulane. "It's less about finding a job you really love now and more just about finding a job that's going to give you job stability."

I'm impressed by the clear-eyed pragmatism of these students — but I'm also saddened by how old they sound. Isn't job stability what you look for when you're middle-aged, with a mortgage to pay and kids to support? When I graduated from college in 2009 without a full-time job, I was panicked but still idealistic. These kids, in contrast, seem hardened by all the chaos they've endured from a young age. In high school, they watched their parents get laid off in the pandemic. In college, they watched older students struggle to land good jobs during the tech downturn — or worse, had their hard-won offers rescinded at the last minute.

The upheaval and uncertainty have taught today's graduates to prepare for the worst. Over the past year, one college senior tells me, she's been intentionally neglecting her studies so she could focus exclusively on her job search, sending out as many as 15 applications a day. The hustle paid off with three offers, including one she accepted from a government contractor. It's her "dream job," she says, because it would enable her to make a real difference in the world.

But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's leaning toward reneging on the offer and accepting a position at a finance company. (That's why she asked me not to use her name.) "I try to keep an optimistic outlook," she tells me. But when I ask her how she feels about taking her first steps into adulthood, she doesn't sound optimistic at all.

"It makes me pretty nervous," she says. "I think a lot of people in my generation have accepted that we're not going to live the same quality of life our parents provided us."

During hard economic times, we expect to hear stories about people losing their jobs. But the greatest casualties often end up being the young people who don't have jobs to lose in the first place. Hiring freezes hurt them the most, making it impossible for them to even get their foot in the door. And research shows just how long a shadow that can cast on someone's career. Five years after the Great Recession, my generation of millennials was earning 11% less than Gen Xers were at a comparable age. And our net worth fell 40% behind theirs, forcing us to delay many of life's biggest milestones: buying a home, starting a family, saving for retirement.

The effects go far beyond money. Students who graduated into the 1982 recession, for example, wound up with fewer kids and more divorces than those who entered better job markets. Even more shocking, the research shows, they were more likely to die early. Whatever gains in efficiency Trump hopes to achieve from DOGE, its most lasting legacy may end up being the harm it inflicts on the careers — and perhaps even the life spans — of his youngest constituents.

That leaves college seniors like Kim scrambling to find a foothold in a job market that is stacked against them. Many companies have already filled their entry-level positions, if they're hiring new grads at all. And he's now competing not only with his fellow students, but also with the flood of young government workers who have been laid off by DOGE — workers who have more experience than he does. As graduation nears, he's trying not to panic. But it's hard to retain a sense of hope when even lower-paying jobs in public service are no longer an option.

"I'm not sure how my future's going to turn out," Kim tells me. And that, when you think about it, is a future that should worry us all.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent for Business Insider.