Class of 2020

Starting careers amid a global pandemic and the worst job market in over eight decades

By Maddie Gannon

Over 3.8 million students graduated college in the United States in the spring of 2020. They entered a job market with the worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression.

The national unemployment rate from February to May—when many college seniors are completing their coursework and beginning their job search— spiked 280%.

When Lauren Blonein started her last semester at University of Southern California, and Joe Braun started his at Sacred Heart University in January, they both had one end goal: secure a sports industry-related job.

From fastidious job search to desperation

Things were looking good for Blonien in February. She networked with someone from a previous internship with the Dallas Stars hockey team who now worked for the Los Angeles Kings. Lauren’s contact helped her arrange an interview with the Kings team for March.

March came, and with it the coronavirus pandemic, which halted the U.S. economy, triggered layoffs and hiring freezes—including at the Kings. Blonien’s interview was canceled. She started to panic. “I definitely instantly knew it was going to be really hard to get a job,” said Blonien.

Blonien spent her last few months of college and the ensuing months desperately looking for a job. What started as a meticulous process to find a job in sports transformed into a panic-stricken attempt to find any job she could. Blonien said she applied for at least 50 jobs between March and June.

From the 50 jobs Blonein applied for, she heard back from just one. Luckily, for her, one response was all she needed—she ended up getting hired as a video technology fellow with the Los Angeles Rams. But even in securing the job, Blonien experienced first-hand how 2020 college graduates faced a drastically different climate than graduates in years past, including even last year’s graduates.

The Rams told her they usually hire five video technology fellows. This year, they could only hire one. In August of 2019, the unemployment rate amongst 20 to 24-year-olds in the U.S.—the age in which most complete their undergraduate studies—was 7.1%. In August 2020, the same age category saw an unemployment rate of 14.1%. That is a 98.59% increase in just a year.

From distracted by COVID-19 to consumed by it

Meanwhile, Braun was struggling to put aside thoughts of graduating and what was going on in the world to even focus on getting a job. “I just wanted to get my courses done and I was so nervous about graduating and getting the right GPA,” he said. “And on top of that, I was so worried about this pandemic and given everything that is happening [in the world], I just was thinking how ‘am I supposed to get a job right now’.”

Then, focusing on jobs became even more difficult for Braun. Soon after his virtual graduation, he contracted COVID-19. He could barely eat and had no energy. “Trust me, jobs were not going through my head at that time,” he said.

And Braun is very much feeling the effects of this. He is now back home in New York with his parents. His dad made it clear that if Braun wants to live under his parents’ roof, he must have his own income. Luckily, Braun has been able to work for the air-conditioning company his dad works for while he is searching for a job in sports, but he is eager to start his career.

After working for the air-conditioning company full-time through the summer, he decided recently to decrease to part-time in order to take his days off—Thursday and Friday—to apply to jobs through LinkedIn.

“It’s so tough because some of these jobs look so good on LinkedIn and then I’ll look closely and they want three to five years of experience,” he said. “A lot of them are entry-level positions but when I read the descriptions, they don’t sound very entry level.”

A job market gripped by hiring freezes and widespread lay-offs

Blonien and Braun’s experiences are far from two isolated anecdotes.

Graduates who already secured jobs before the spring were still fighting to keep them amid widespread furloughs. But for graduates such as Blonien and Braun, who started applying during the spring and summer, the odds of getting and keeping a job were much tougher. From November 2019 to February 2020, the four months before the pandemic took shape in the U.S., the percent increase in the unemployment rate for 20 to 24-year-olds was 0%. From March 2020 to June 2020, the four months following, the increase in the unemployment rate for this age category was 127%.

Senior Career Adviser at the USC Career Center, Esther Lanier, said she has seen many internships get canceled due to the pandemic and it has caused uncertainty for her students. She is encouraging them to use this uncertain time to make connections. “Networking has always been important but during this pandemic, it is now more important than ever,” she said.

Although Blonien was able to secure her dream starting position, she is keenly aware of what many college graduates are going through right now. “I feel bad for my friends who haven’t lucked out and that is the hardest thing because I don’t even think I did anything better or different,” she said. “My other friends are so qualified and they are applying to everything they can think of and just no one is hiring.”

And Blonien, as a woman, was particularly successful. That is because despite both genders facing tougher circumstances, women, in particular, are even more disadvantaged.

From August 2019 to August 2020, the percent increase in unemployment rate for men aged 20 to 24 rose 82.1%. Yet, for women, the increase amounted to 122%. And from March 2020 to April 2020, the percent increase in unemployment rate for men in this age category increased 158%. But again, women carried a larger burden facing a 237% increase.

Amid the pandemic, it has become a widely covered topic that women are facing larger unemployment rates. Much of this is due to women having to quit their jobs to take on more housework duties and childcare responsibilities as children around the nation are attending school online from home. But as of 2018, 78.6% of women aged 20 to 24 in the U.S. were not mothers yet. Therefore, family duties cannot be largely attributed to the greater unemployment rates faced by women of this age.

Blonien has seen this play out particularly with her female friends who graduated with her. As Blonien puts it, the COVID-19 pandemic has made everything about graduating college in 2020 harder, even the ability to maintain college friendships.

“The pandemic made graduation very unique per person and it’s not anyone’s fault but now, all of a sudden, all of us who graduated together aren’t really at the same stage of life anymore,” she said. “That makes it really hard to stay friends.”