To find reliable cellphone service for his job interviews, 24-year-old Jule Brown often sits in his Hyundai Santa Fe next to the athletic fields at his old high school in Lower Merion Township, Pa.
Mr. Brown, who graduated from New York University in May, was all set for a career in sports marketing. A forward and guard on the NYU basketball team, he completed three marketing internships and earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences. But after the pandemic forced much of the sports world to cancel or scale back operations, Mr. Brown saw his job prospects vanish. “Agencies, brands, pretty much everyone is on a hiring freeze right now,” he says.
He’s been living at home with his mother and grandmother, babysitting and doing a series of odd jobs while he looks for a full-time job. Interviewing for jobs in his car outside his old high school, where he was a basketball star, helps him remember his past athletic success and focus on his future aspirations. “That’s my place of solace,” says Mr. Brown. “It’s my good luck.”
The Class of 2020 was primed to enter one of the most robust job markets in history: In the fall of 2019, the U.S. unemployment rate was at a 50-year low of 3.5%.
Instead, they face one of the most challenging job markets for young people in decades. This spring, when many were graduating from college, unemployment for 20- to 24-year-olds was above 20%, according to the Labor Department, compared with the low teens for all age groups. About 25% of employers said they closed their open positions or rescinded offers made in the spring to graduating students because of Covid-19, according to a September survey of 2,408 employers conducted by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. “The hammer came down very suddenly,” says Philip Gardner, director of the institute and author of the study.
