A generation of lost potential

A generation educated for a future that isn’t arriving

It became very clear to me just how many other people my age were in the exact same boat. A survey published by the US Federal Reserve in July found that 49 percent of adults under 30 are currently living with their parents.

Just as shockingly, more than 41 percent of recent graduates are currently working jobs that do not require a college degree. Entry-level roles are rapidly vanishing, with further data from Cadient discovering a 73 percent drop in entry-level salaried openings over four years — just one in 50 jobs.

The problem extends beyond undergraduate employment. In my first month back home, I joined a gym and met another 27-year-old working there. As she was showing me around, she told me that working there was never part of her plan. She was meant to start a PhD in Environmental Sciences later that year, but funding for the program was cut by the current administration.

Her experience reflects a much broader trend: fewer people are enrolling in PhD programmes. The Association of American Universities found that major research universities across the US admitted 15 percent fewer students this past year, and international student applications fell by 21 percent, largely due to federal funding cuts. This substantial decline in PhD admissions could “imperil a generation of new talent”, reads a recent New York Times article, while another article published in Chemistry World warns that we’re “losing an entire generation of scientific talent”.

While I felt some comfort knowing I wasn’t the only one in their late 20s with a science degree living with their parents, I began to feel more and more anger towards a system that was rendering us powerless.

Then, when I started working at the restaurant — I’d end up working there for seven months — I was shocked to learn that nearly every single one of my coworkers, from the kitchen to the front of house, held college degrees.

Meet your modern restaurant staff

One of my coworkers, Alyssa, who is also my age and holds a STEM degree, landed in a similar predicament as me.

“As a first-generation college graduate, I really felt like I was doing everything I was supposed to do,” Alyssa shared with me. “I got a job in my field right after college, bought a home with my partner of 10 years, and started building the life I had worked so hard for. But the job I took ended up being an incredibly toxic environment, and I stayed much longer than I should have because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to find something else.”

Eventually, she reached a point where she knew staying was costing her too much. “Since then, I’ve had to settle for jobs outside of my field, in positions that don’t reflect my education or experience. It’s disappointing to feel like I did everything ‘right’ and have still ended up struggling to find where I fit.”

Alyssa expressed a sentiment shared time and time again by early career adults, both online and in day-to-day conversations.

“I think that’s the part people don’t always understand about being in your 20s right now. Unless you went into a very specific career path like medicine, law or a trade, it can feel like there’s no clear place for you. You can have the degree, the experience, the work ethic, and the desire to succeed, and still feel like you’re constantly trying to prove that you’re worth giving a chance,” she said.

“After a while, that takes a toll. You just start to wonder how long you can keep pouring everything you have into something that doesn’t seem to be giving anything back.”

When taking the “right path” stops working

Stormy joined our restaurant as a host just a couple of months before I left, and, by this point, I was almost anticipating her to hold a degree — I was correct.

Stormy recently graduated with a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies/Marketing and holds an Associate’s Degree in General Arts. “The current job market is extremely tough to navigate and frustrating to witness,” Stormy told me. “Even though I did the traditionally ‘right thing’ by graduating college, doing internships, and networking, I’m still struggling to find a job in the field I’m passionate about.”

Stormy and I traded many stories about the endless slew of job applications, the hours spent tailoring each cover letter, only to never hear back from the majority of companies we’d applied to.

“In the post-grad landscape, it can feel hopeless: to scroll through endless job sites and see roles designed to be eventually automated by AI or salaries that won’t cover the rising cost of living,” Stormy explained. “I’ve been told that if I follow the system and play by the rules, I could one day buy a home and raise 2-3 kids on a reasonable salary, but that isn’t the reality.”

So monumental is the housing crisis in the US right now that the median age of a first-time homebuyer is 40 years old, a historic high from age 29 in the 1980s. Furthermore, 42 percent of all adults expressed concern over finding or keeping a job in 2025, up from 37 percent the year prior.

This dilemma isn’t limited to the United States. Several classmates from my graduate degree expressed similar struggles with the UK job market, with a significant proportion of us not being able to find jobs in our fields within a year of graduating.

A survey published at the end of last month backs this experience, finding that graduate job vacancies have dropped by roughly 50 percent in the past year in the UK. Employers replacing entry-level roles with AI have been a major contributor to this fallout. Furthermore, a recent Australian federal report found that a majority of international graduates are working well below their skill level.

Generation Z is on track to become the most educated generation in history, according to the Pew Research Center, and has invested record levels of money into higher education, adjusted for inflation. While general consumer inflation in the US has risen roughly 304 percent since 1980, college tuition and fees have surged by more than double that at a whopping 690 percent.

We contain mountains of niche knowledge in our respective subjects, knowledge that could contribute to the positive transformation and betterment of society, and still so many of us are serving food in restaurants and delivering Amazon packages. We are a generation who will likely be in debt the rest of our lives, who may never own a home, and who will likely always face job insecurity.

In many ways, we are a generation of wasted talent — or rather, we are a potent mix of talent and expertise with ever-diminishing places to meaningfully apply and be compensated for it.

To be clear, this is no attack on higher education. Higher education is, and will always be, one of the most vital pillars in any society. There are few greater pursuits, joys and forms of empowerment than education. In fact, there has never been a more crucial time to protect higher education.

What I admire most about my generation, though, is our refusal to let these systemic failures drown our determination to create.

Finding another way forward

I first approached Nina, whose head had always been down, washing dishes in silence, in the kitchen one day after a month or so of working together. Through hours of conversations, Nina inspired me with a story of resilience, community and unwavering dedication to one’s craft.

“Back in 2024, I got my Associate’s in Music and Recording Technology,” Nina shared. “It was rough for a while, with a span of at least six months where I was unemployed despite the fact that I was sending out 20 applications each week. Most of the time I never heard anything back in response. I ended up getting stuck at a kitchen where my starting pay was $13/hour.”

Nina’s partner holds the same degree, and while she managed to get a few sound engineering gigs here and there, most of them were seasonal, resulting in extremely unstable income.

“In order to build a career for ourselves, my wife and I have been writing a musical for the last three years that is finally coming out with a live stage performance this December.”

Their show, Time Stop Coffee Shop, is a comedic space romp that is loosely based on their own lived experience trying to find meaning and happiness in a time when the future feels bleak. It tackles issues like the dangers of AI, government-sanctioned human trafficking and the risk of blindly following orders from those in charge.

“This whole project is being led by us, with the incredible support of our family, friends and community who helped us raise money to fund our Kickstarter back in May,” Nina shared.

“We are working with the Black Swamp Players over in Bowling Green to bring our show to the stage, and we couldn't be more thrilled to see our vision coming to life before our very eyes. We hope that not only the show itself but the journey to get there inspires and uplifts others to go after their goals, no matter how impossible it seems.”

Nina’s story made me think about what happens when the traditional path from education to employment breaks down: we don’t just stop creating — we find other ways to make things, build communities and pursue work that matters to us. But resilience should not be mistaken for a solution.

Young people should not have to become relentlessly resourceful to find a way to use the education and skills they have spent years acquiring. It’s one thing to choose a less conventional path; it’s another to be pushed into one because the conventional path has disappeared.

What I’ve found most inspiring this past year is what’s unveiled during unforgiving economic times: the synchronisation of spirit among members of the community, our voices, our shared passions, our efforts; that neighbours and family members still donate what little money they have to musicals, to art, at a time when companies grossing billions of dollars each year continue to maximise profits or sell out to AI.

While inspiring, young people deserve a future where they can land on their feet. The issue is not that higher education has failed young people — though there is something to say about admission fees skyrocketing well beyond what most people can afford.

As Stormy put it, “to me, the unemployment crisis we’re facing is a reckoning when you place value in profits over people.”