These have been some of the scarier headlines: "The entry-level job market is the worst it's been in 37 years," said Fortune Magazine. "Young Graduates Face the Grimmest Job Market in Years," read the New York Times. And from NPR: "You're not broken. The job market is."
Brandy Dalton, senior director of BBA/MS Career Programs at Southern Methodist University - Cox School of Business, said jobs are harder to find these days.
"This year's been tighter," she said. "It's definitely something we anticipated. It's not the job market we faced even two years ago, and definitely not what we were working with post-COVID, right, with the hiring surge."
The unemployment rate is higher now for recent college graduates compared to just a few years ago, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but Dalton - who helps SMU graduates find jobs–said times aren't as dire as some headlines suggest.
"The jobs are still available, they're harder to get, right?" Dalton said. "Students have to do more for, you know, one or two job offers, maybe even just one, versus what they did a couple years ago to receive multiple job offers."
KERA talked to three recent grads in North Texas about their experiences looking for jobs in today's market – and how some managed to land one.
Katie Dabney graduated from Southern Methodist University in May with a degree in marketing and minors in advertising and sociology – but her job search started months before then.
"If you had asked me, like in January, I would have said, 'oh, I would think that I would've had a job by now,'" she said. "I didn't expect it to go on for so long."
Dabney, who's moved back home with her parents in Forney, said she's sent out dozens of resumes detailing her qualifications, goals, experiences and several internships. Those all led to10 interviews, just one callback, and no job offer.
"Companies are expecting more from applicants than I expected," she said.
Francisco Beltran graduated this spring from UNT Dallas with degrees in psychology and human services management into what he saw as an iffy market.
"I was worried at first, just because I would apply to different positions," he said. "Like, I would also try to work with Parkland and they actually denied a few of my applications."
After graduating, he got an internship with the nonprofit After8toEducate, which serves unsheltered youth. After about a month, they hired him full-time.
"They're always looking for new employees or new people to fill up their positions," Beltran said. "It wasn't that hard to find a job in my area of expertise."
Even with an in-demand data engineering degree from Northeastern University in Boston, DeSoto native Sarah Berhe said finding her first job was tougher than she expected.
"I think I applied to probably close to 150 jobs over about a four-week span," she said. "I started my job search end of August, but I really picked it up in September."
She managed to land a job with Fidelity Investments in October before she graduated last December, but on a delayed basis. She'll start that job in 3 months.
Meanwhile, she's finishing a one-year internship at Workforce Solutions, one of several internships she's held. She believes they were essential to securing full-time work.
"I had a lot of things to talk about and show that I have worked before, so that made me more hirable," she said. "And then because that internship with data engineering specifically, I think that helped. It's a really secure, full-time role."
But Berhe said even that keeps changing, and it's hard keeping up.
"Universities are pushing internships a lot these days," Berhe added. "I think before it was kind of an edge if you have a couple internships, but now it's becoming the norm."
Bill Zeeble is KERA's education reporter. Got a tip? Email Bill at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on X @bzeeble.
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