Diplomas used to open doors – now even master’s degrees send 60 job requests per month without luck

The job hunters sent an average of 45 job requests per month in May 2025, according to data shared exclusively with Fortune Simplifiez job platform,, Who has followed its million job research users and 150 million applications in the past year. It is more than a double of 22 means of last year – an increase that shows how desperate the labor market has become.

But the situation was even more disastrous for professionals with several degrees, despite expectations beyond the realization of the American dream. Master students sent an average of 32 to 60 job requests per month, while Bachelor students generally applied to around 15 to 38 open roles.

Even those who studied university majors who once guaranteed six -digit wages must work harder to win a concert. Computer graduates send an average of 22 to 51 requests per month, compared to non -ordinary scientific majors which apply to 21 to 41 concerts.

Fierce job market for very lucrative roles like IT should not surprise. IT -programmer employment has fallen at its lowest level since 1980 – before the Internet was still existed – like the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that AI can now even do the coding work of intermediate level engineers. Instead of humans in competition with each other, they now compete for roles because AI resumes the work of entry -level jobs.

They could apply for ghosts

In addition to an extremely competitive white collar labor market – because AI continues only for more entry -level roles – storm managers do not facilitate job hunters: a common thread is candidates applying for more than 1,000 roles, only to receive radio silence.

About 81% of recruiters claim that their employer publishes positions of “ghost work”, which do not exist or are already filled, according to a 2024 MYPERFECLETEMET report. The common HR reasoning to publish these false lists includes: maintaining a presence on employment panels when they do not hire it, the evaluation of the effectiveness of their work descriptions and the discharge of a talent basin for the future. But job hunters are tired of being left in darkness.

“We often hear job seekers say:” I am tired, I am depressed, I am desperate “using these very harsh words when it comes to the labor market,” said Jasmine Escalera, a career expert for Myperfeclesume, said Fortune. “This is one of the reasons why they lose confidence in organizations and businesses.”

The majority of candidates say that employers have ghosts thoroughly, according to a Greenhouse report in 2024. And on the back, they are also “curved with love” during the process. More than half of the candidates say that the interviewers showers them with excessive praise and flattery during the hiring rounds, to be offered a low salary and a unsuitable job.

Now, generation Z says their diplomas are a “waste of money”

Graduates with a fresh face are frozen out of the workforce; About 58% of students who graduated in the past year are still looking for their first job, according to a recent Kickresume report. The labor market and the hiring situation have become so bad that more than a third of all graduates now say that their diploma was a “waste of money”, according to a survey in 2025.

Graduates of generation Z are so massively unemployed, despite representing only 5% of the workforce, that they even increase the American unemployment rate – having an “oversized” impact on the American unemployment rate.

From now on, the youngest generation of workers is particularly oppressed by their prospects, with 51% expressing remorse to obtain their certificates, against 41% of millennials and 20% of baby boomers.