This year’s job market has been bleak, to say the least. Layoffs hit the highest level in 14 years; job openings are barely budging; and quits figures are plummeting. It’s no wonder people feel stuck and discouraged—especially as many candidates have been on the job hunt for a year.
But some mid-career professionals are working with the cards they’ve been dealt by going back to school. Many are turning to data analytics, cybersecurity, AI-focused courses, health care, MBA programs, or trade certifications for an “immediate impact on their careers,” Metaintro CEO Lacey Kaelani told Fortune.
But while grad school can certainly offer the opportunity to level-up your career once you’ve completed a program, it comes with financial and personal sacrifices, like time. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, one year of grad school, on average, costs about $43,000 in tuition. That’s nearly 70% of the average salary in the U.S.
Everyone: Learn how to code!
Corporate Masters: Who needs coders? We have AI.
I can only speak for my employer …. The ai mandate has actually led to some nice new features for our product. However using it on a daily basis has resulted in a lot of made up metrics and increased tech debt. Everywhere it’s saved us a bit of time, it’s wasted our time elsewhere.
I actually do believe ai can be a useful coding tool, can help coders be more efficient, but it’s not ready to create final products and may never be. It’s just another tool but you have to know what you’re doing, recognize when it needs guidance, and understand that you are the one responsible for doing a good job
I did this. I gave up looking for a job in tech after a year. Luckily, I have a job so I’m not desperate. I just don’t like my job.
Getting a degree? But that’s what started the problem in the first place!
This is all corporate tech stuff anyhow. Inflating an already inflated market destined to be whittled down by AI is probably one of the most short term goals iv ever heard
Apprenticeships or career tech certificates can help.
I’m a journey level worker and I’m back in school. Construction has been recession level for at least a couple years in my area and it’s getting worse fast. They’re purging anyone female or brown from the unions in my area because that’s DEI. We’ve had incidents of union officers threatening to lynch black apprentices and hanging nooses, I’ve seen female apprentices complain about SA and getting blackballed. It’s back to the good ol boy system full force in construction right now. I’d say 90% of these high paid white nepo baby construction guys are rabid Trump supporters. It’s full FBI friends, brothers and in-laws only and your tax dollars pay for these apprenticeships and a lot of projects these guys pull six figures on so telling people to go into an apprenticeship is just a racist dog whistle unless they’re related to someone
Well… thanks for the racist dog whistle accusation. I’m a light bringer — I’m trying to be encouraging. Career tech certificates in medical are making hundreds of thousands of people of all races and genders eligible for careers starting 60k, 70k, up to 110k. Radiology tech is just one of many.
Onward.
It wasn’t meant as an accusation. It’s just a statement of facts. I don’t expect you to know that if you’re not in the trades but I have a lot of trauma from seeing horrible things happening to people around racism and sexism in the trades
I mean we’re seeing the same thing in Canada only it’s every racial/religious enclave doing it. Indians are redrawing the caste lines, Jews are pushing out gentiles, Chinese are holding condo board meetings in Mandarin and then using them to force out other people…
This is what happens when people let themselves be divided; they’re going to carve up the pittance left to us while leaving the rest of the pie to the sickeningly wealthy.
Who’s doing all the work? As a homeowner, I’ve definitely seen stereotypes in action for work I’ve had done. Replacing my roof was typical. All white guys selling me on how wonderful it’ll be. But it was a crew of Hispanics that came out to do the work, and they hustled like no ones business. I know who I’d trust to get a job done.
Actually similar deal for my electrician. I went through several companies of delays and excessive fees for truck rolls, upselling, etc. but I found this local guy who happens to be Hispanic, who is very responsive, cheaper, and does an outstanding job
I know who to trust to give me a good deal, excellent service, great response, and they’re not the white glad-handlers. I understand good work is not a racial characteristic but perhaps the extra hurdles to the business make it so. I would never claim the white guts can’t do the work but if you’re firing in a racial manner, how the heck do you have enough people to get the job done? And yes I’m a white guy who has always valued competent hard work in myself and others
the worth of a degree is highly correlated to the field of study and the institution of study.
a lot of people get bogus degrees from bogus fields of study and are shocked they can’t get productive high-paying employment…
The job market is in the shitter and you are blaming the people trying to find jobs and assuming they can’t because they got a “bogus degree”… That’s a very boomer response of you.
job market for what exactly? what jobs are they trying to find exactly?
job market is great for some professions, shit for others. yeah for entry level tech it’s shit because they massive overhired during the pandemic and are still oversupplied with too many shitty coders because there is a massive oversupply now as everyone chased computer science for quick and easy money. for nursing you can make a killing if you are willing to travel nurse or get yourself into certain specialties. but nursing is hard work and a lot of people don’t want to do it.
the devil is in the details. there is no generalized job market where average joe can just get a 100K job with a English/psych degree from a state college. all those jobs requires specialized degrees, experience, and connections, years of effort to get your foot in the door.
industries come and go and oftentimes you have to move with the times and the geography. my brother has been unemployed for 5 years… but it’s because he’s a stupid ass who refuses to move or take a job he thinks he is ‘below’ him. (less than 300K salary at a big corp) and every employer can see that attitude he has and his inflexible arrogance and why would they want such a person on their team? many people are their own worst enemy when it comes to employment.
having interviewed people over the years… 99% of candidates are eliminated because suck and fuck up the interview process, or are applying for a job they know nothing about. Out of 500 resumes you might get 5-15 that are actually relevant to the position and show the candidate actaully is familiar with the company and the position, of that group maybe 5 get an interview and 1-2 are actually desirable hires.
tbf going back to school sounds nice. struggling with financial instability, not so much …
How are these people going to school without jobs?
Debt, lots of accumulating debt.
They work while going to school and have a partner or spouse with a decent job. I know at least a couple people who did this in their 40’s
Savings
when facing unemployment, the LAST thing I want to do is burn a shitload of money on the absolute fucking racket that is higher education in the USA.
Unless it’s for something like HVAC or plumbing or nursing where there’s never not a constant need, anyways
HVAC, and every other trade, is only really good money if you own the business doing it. Just theres no big HVAC monopoly so you can actually dream of doing that.
Had warranty work done on an HVAC system that blew up shortly after installation which covered parts, but not labor (what a ripoff, by the way). Paid about $1400 for about 3 hours of work by one guy. Asked him what he got paid, about $20-25 same as everyone else who gets their hands dirty without a degree or hazard pay.
Reclamation costs, EPA certs, having to buy full tanks rather than what i need and the cost of insurance all got me out of my own HVAC business. I do miss the early spring days of 200 dollar house calls to just rinse the leaves down and out of a unit though lol
I wish we could just go back to schools being for people who want to learn about things, and putting employers back in charge of training their work force. Subsidizing a fucking intermediary to provide the basic ticket into the work force…who the fuck came up with that idea?
the problem is employers dont train employees anymore, so they look at “2+years experience required as a first start”
I gotta say, part of that is work visa programs. A very common path I’ve seen is someone getting their college degree in their country, do a couple years work to get sponsored by one of the outsourcing companies, then take a masters degree in the us, so they can enter the country on a student visa and have a head start looking for a job. Now they are looking for a starting job but have a couple years experience and a masters degree.
I can’t fault anyone who takes that path: it seems very successful. But it causes imbalances that don’t work for the rest of us
yea citizens are pretty screwed, as thier job listings almost always is framed in a way to only select from h1-b visa applicants, im betting they are willing to accept one that is lower in the skill setting than what the job listing is claiming they require if they sought visa holders. I think its just to show non-discriminatory praticies.
It’s a stop gap, hoping for better times in the future. I did it when I had a physical disability no one could explain, so I couldn’t get disability coverage much less any treatment. I ate some loans instead of living on the street or with abusive family. It sucked, but that’s the US for you - if you’re not making someone money, you’re welcome to just go die.
Just when I thought I had read thee most dystopian shit. Here you go staving off homelessness with an unforgivable loan to an educational institution masquerading as a homeless shelter/bank. A shocking and appalling, yet all to common tale. Im hoping you have a positive outcome.
Thank you so much! This was over two decades ago. Everything turned out pretty a great. The abusive parent is dead, I have a wonderful partner, and we’re parents to a big family of furry children. I do still have a six figure student loan, but it’s pretty close to magically going away. Feels good!
P.s. I can’t believe I can say “over two decades ago” and for that time to be when I was an adult. Fuck, I got old!
nursing you would still have to burn alot of money, but the demand is there for nursing, if you can tolerate PEOPLE and bodily wastes. you can make bank depending on what you do. if one has a degree, schools will consider it as post-bacc, so the classes are MUCH MORE expensive than if you were taken as a undergrad(they upcharge it for graduates and post baccs). one should not get a 2nd degree, since schools may allow you to do that, they called “academic incest”. i had former co-worker in retail, he was already in the tech field, he was delusional into trying to get another degree to do with AI(and getting a ms eventually), i told them you should just find a job in tech(beginning of pandemic)
We don’t need any more MBAs.
I actually think we need more people who hate MBAs to go through the degree so we can tell whats bullshit and whats not.
It’s almost all bullshit.
The main point of an MBA program is to indoctrinate students into believing that maximizing profit is never predatory, but simply the most efficient means by which to run a business.
There’s also some “leadership” filler that is ultimately ignored in favor of profits, and some basic accounting that is essentially learning how to game the numbers to…maximize profits via application of debt and capital chicanery.
-courtesy of Boston U MBA program
MBA programs are mostly about joining the MBA cult. they aren’t much for education or learning.
the biggest benefit is the networking you get based on what MBA program you went to.
Tldr; it’s all bullshit
So software engineer here. I went back to school in my 40s and got my Executive MBA and graduated in 2024. I knew nothing about how businesses truly worked going in. I learned the basics for accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship, org behavior, and more.
I’m glad I did it, I learned a lot, but overall it’s like the sample platter of topics. I know enough to mostly understand the specialists when they speak, but I’m no expert in any of the topics above. I know enough to be dangerous if I was left to my own devices on any of the topics.
Let me save you all a lot of money. An MBA teaches you to view all business decisions through a finance lense. For non business people reading this, Finance projects forward in time, Accounting looks backward in time. The goal of a business is to maximize profit. You can maximize profit by increasing revenue and/or decreasing costs. If you list our all possible business projects, you pick a collection of projects you believe will maximize profit OVER TIME. Aka the time-value of money.
Now an executive MBA is basically the same as any other MBA program, but it’s for people with over a decade in professional experience. I could easily see someone with less real world experience falling into Dunning Kruger. What business people fuck up is their assumptions on their “business opportunities” models. In other words, they don’t account for some factor, grossly misunderstand a factor’s influence, or don’t give two shits because the timeline of a project will extend beyond their tenure. That last point is especially important to understand because on paper the finance might look great, but they won’t be at the firm by the time the accounting of a project fully wraps up.
So yeah, the system is ripe for exploitation and bullshit. An incompetent business leader can make decisions that maximize short term wins, and split to another company before the long term losses land.
We actively need fewer, a lot fewer
MBA programs are highly profitable for most universities. they are big money makers.
Is this really new? I have masters level classes in three states, because assuming a stable living situation every time I got laid off I started taking classes. Why wouldn’t you keep working to improve your situation?
Luckily I was never out of work long enough to complete a degree, but I would’ve
Late 40s, highly skilled, trans, unemployed for 2+ years.
I’ve been down to the final candidate selection a few times now and still haven’t been selected yet.
I’ve hired plenty of people. In general, final candidates are usually all fully capable of doing the job they’re applying for. In the end, the hiring manager just gets to pick the one they want to work with most.
I feel like when hiring managers look at me, all they see are problems and risks. Time consuming HR meetings, extra effort making sure people use the right pronouns, judgements from executive leaders who might see a middle manager not doing a good job at leaning into where the winds are headed.
I wonder, even if I spend 3 more years on a secondary degree, whether I’ll find myself right back in same situation (talented and surrounded by cowards unwilling to hire me), but now with $200k in new student loan debt.
Oi! Not trans, but queer, also unemployed for over 2 years now.
I used to be an econometrician, so I can tell you:
You, me?
We’re not unemployed.
We are ‘Not in the Labor Force’.
… we do not count towards the offical unemployment numbers.
… we do not count towards the offical unemployment numbers.
Wait…
unemployed for over 2 years now.
If you’re still actively seeking jobs you’d still be counted in the official unemployment category of U-3 unemployment. Even if you weren’t applying to jobs but still wanted to work you’d be counted in the (potentially more accurate) U-6 unemployment, right?
Normally, in a more sane and functioning world, you’d simply be correct.
I was a bit overzealous, I myself have given up looking because of the massive shadow jobs problem, the interview processes are ridiculous, etc etc, I erroneously transposed that onto them as well.
However, because Trump fired the head of the BLS, and Elon/DOGE cut back their workforce a good deal…
https://www.nisa.com/perspectives/heavily-distorted-cpi-print-reveals-little-useful-information/
https://www.markets.com/analysis/cpi-estimation-methodology-concerns-us-1010-en
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/imputation.htm
For most of this year, they haven’t even had enough staff to actually directly measure about a third of what goes into CPI… they just take the old data, run a model on it, predict it forward, and pretend thats real data.
They call this ‘carry forward price imputation’ or something like that.
So they’re just using some esoteric price model(s) to estimate, instead of actually gather, a bunch of data that is then treated as if it is real data, for the next stages of actually calculating the various cpi segments.
If they’re that fucked at doing cpi, they’re almost certainly also fucked at actually doing the Household Survey properly.
Granted, I can’t strictly prove this, because I do not have a team of forensic accountants auditing their data…
… But, having worked as varying kinds of data analyst, I can say with high confidence that the BLS methodology itself is flawed, and their ability to actually undertake that methodology is severely hamstrung for this whole year.
You don’t end up realizing that you overcounted job growth by a fucking million jobs… if you have a sound methodology.
… So thats a very long way of saying ‘well technically, if you wanna get technical, actually, this is all horseshit at this point, thus the person I’m replying to probably isn’t actually being counted, via problems that go outside/beyond the simple stated BLS methodology.’
You make a very good point. I’ve stopped using CDC for any realistic data or health guidance and instead defer to Health Canada or the NHS.
I should have also assumed economic data from the trump administration was equally suspect now.
$200k in new student loan debt.
Jesus. I’m looking at getting some additional masters degree in Spain and it’s 10-14 months and 1.5-4k Euros.
That’s like the cost of a college meal plan for a 4 year degree in the US. Not including housing in the dorms, just the food.
managers that do the hiing like to play games and gauge response, to see if you play ball with the company, being outside the standard applicant, does have risk.
i also have considering going back as a post-bacc but because my previous degree had some setback academic wise, makes me somewhat inelgible for partial grad school.(for a niche ceritification), unsure if taking postbacc will offsett the setback. also because post-bacc is more expensive than regular undergrad class as well.
e
what kind of work are you looking for?
Technical program management work ideally; it’s been a good dozen years since I developed software so those skills are rusty, but TPM work the the need for balancing risk management with pragmatism (strong alignment with control room ownership, command presence and incident stewardship) are good fits.
Got any openings for me?
Who can afford that?!
Tech
This article seems to be exclusively about masters degrees or people going back to school for a second degree in a new field, but what I’m curious about is if there’s been a similar spike in people going for their first degree. I’m trying to figure out how much of this is people trying to land a job in a recession and how much of it is people trying to make themselves appealing from an immigration perspective. There’s definitely a lot of people who feel like getting out of the country is a nonstarter simply because countries only want the kind of labor that comes from obtaining a degree in a field.
it’s the fact nobody will hire you for anything unless you have multiple degrees
i dont this applies to undergraduates. people with degrees cant find jobs in whatever field, because the job market is so poor, even before covid.
as an undergrad you would be eligible for grants, scholarships,etc with no cost to your own, depending if you are going to a state school, community college pipeline. going to a expensive college that isnt paid for in full would be pretty foolish, if your an older than the average college student.
I’m in that boat. Joined the IT world before the first .com crash, dropped out of school for it and never got a degree. I’m very stuck right now and I hate the career I’m stuck in. Trying to find a way to go back to get a degree, maybe open a door or two…
I’m doing similar from the same field. IT burned me tf out. And then lit the ashes. Already have a degree but I’m trying to change fields now. Don’t want to even look at a server
I have run teams, and I’m an adult leader in my kids troop, so I’m hoping to get into IT leadership, also been an architect, but I just can’t get much response to my resumes for leadership without any education on there. I’ve been shut out several times during to lack of degree, so hoping it might open a door or two. I don’t think I can get away from IT yet, but maybe can change my role in it.
My main issue became (beyond burnout) that despite my expertise, no one wanted to pay what that experience was worth. They would rather get a noob to do their stuff. They also don’t like it when you have work life boundaries. At least here and for what I do.
That’s neat you did architecture, Architecting was mind numbing for me or i could have rode that into the sunset. I thought I wanted to do it, did for awhile and was good at it but I didn’t enjoy it.
Hopefully leadership works for you though. It’s possible to move up without a degree, but it’s damn hard. I have a friend that has managed it, but he’s the only one I know. I can lead a team but I don’t like managing people because I’m not able to be cutthroat when someone needs to be laid off.
Where’s the leisure society? We have all the resources we need, all the energy we need, and simply put, there just isn’t all that much that needs doing that can keep everyone busy.
Where’s the leisure society? We have all the resources we need, all the energy we need, and simply put, there just isn’t all that much that needs doing that can keep everyone busy.
You’re right about everything; But you’re forgetting that in the U.S., suffering is the point. You have “suffering builds character” christians and an oligarchy that actively wants to keep the peasants away from power, or having enough free time to think about things.
Alas I have resigned myself to that.
There are huge shortages in skilled experienced trades. I’ve seen it all over the US in steel mills. Operators, electricians, welders, etc.
Emphasis on experienced. There’s a fuckton of green apprentices who recently switched careers.
Been doin this work for like 10 years as an electrician so I literally applied to 12 jobs when I finally quit my job of 7 years, got 3 interviews, 2 offers.
Still love my job but I see the labor shortages that can’t be replaced by AI and even automated robotics for production lines
Just look at the multiple fires at the Oswego plant in upstate New York for why the mills are still the wild west sometimes.
I’m fucking stuck in this economic pit.
better grow roots and learn photosynthesis, then
That would require sunlight and I’m living through dark times.
Oregon Trail Sub-Generation. Always the God Damned Guinea Pigs.
I’m tired, Boss.
I used to say health care was solid but there have been layoffs across the country all year. Every time the touch Medicare or Medicaid hospitals will lose income and cost cut. In addition, less insurance means less patients means less income and more layoffs.
You have died of dysentery takes on new meaning.
The massive cuts to Medicaid that were in the Big Beautiful Bill passed by Trump and the GOP aren’t supposed to go into effect until after the 2026 midterms IIRC. When that does happen I think finding a job in the healthcare sector will be very difficult if not impossible.
nursing is still pretty solid, there is probably options other than a physical hospital, like traveling nursing. non-nursing,mD related health is out there but its more niche and some is more difficult to get into.
Units have been dissolved and nurses have been laid off. New grad programs/hires put on hold. Nurses may be less in the line of fire, but they’re not immune.
Absolutely the fuck not. The Oregon Trail ended you with land and a house for free.
The Oregon Trail ended
you with land and a house for free.with you stealing land from Native Americans and risking your life to be a subsistence farmer in a one-room shed you lived in until you died at the age of 38.
Discovering new paths and education is good. We should not look down at this, but encourage reschooling at 30, 40, 50 or any age. Most skills are out of date within 5 years of leaving school. Having said that, you can reup or relearn stuff in a year or two, or even six months.
Most skills are out of date within 5 years of leaving school.
Then they weren’t skills, they were trivia.
unless one is in the USA, where higher education is mostly a giant scam and massive ripoff.
most skills are out of date within 5 years of leaving school
What kind of “skills” are you talking about and what kind of job are you doing if you require re-education after five years?? I honestly can’t imagine an education/job where you can’t remain up to date throughout your career, not to mention grow in your role.
I’m not as educated as a lot of y’all in these comments, but I can’t even get hired for retail positions let alone level 1 tech support jobs.
just out of curiosity: have you considered applying in agriculture?
No I haven’t. I just did a quick search on indeed for my area and “agricultural” brings up similar warehouse or sales jobs instead of what I’m assuming your implication was.
yeah i’ve done two summers of fieldwork and while it might sound boring, it was actually pretty cool :D we were working in the field all day long and it’s not boring because you keep moving, chatting, adapting to each specific fruit, it’s fun. you should try it.
Zoomers and under are completely fucked.
… everyone who isn’t a a deca-millionaire, is fucked.
Entry level positions require 3 years experience, in every field now.
Entirely seriously: If you want a future beyond debt-slavery, you’ll have to figure out how to undertake an actual revolution.
Step 1:
Delete Tiktok and all corporate social media.
Step 2:
Organize with like minded individuals via other means, establish mutual aid and support groups.
Step 3:
???
Step 4:
Abolish Profit.
surprisingly sane words
Entry level positions require 3 years experience, in every field now.
I think that is because they know they can’t actually hire everyone, so instead of making older people unemployed and risking them raising their voice about it, they’re making the younger people unemployed because they figure they can get away with it more easily.
younger people never know how it was like 20 years in the past. so they don’t have anything to compare and they can’t say “well, suddenly i’m out of a job” because they never had one in the first place, so it’s easier to sell the changing reality to them.
This is the bigger picture:
… we are not all going to survive the great unraveling, even if we had benevolent geniuses in charge.
With corpos and fascists in charge?
Gonna be even worse.
Oh yes i know the W3 model and the Club Of Rome (i think they made that diagram?) in the context of the paper Limits to Growth.
The thing is, it’s outdated. That study was done when renewable energy was inconceivable. Things have changed since then. The study was literally done in i think 1970 (first version) and then updates every couple years (significant update was done in 2004).
In fact, until very recently, people couldn’t imagine that renewable energy would actually become a big thing. Solar energy somehow became the cheapest source of (technically useful) energy (!) in human history (says the IEA), and they’re gonna know it since they’re literally an oil and gas analysis organization so if even they admit it, it’s not “green propaganda” but solid facts.
This changes the picture dramatically, because under capitalism companies continue to seek the cheapest power possible, and that’s simply solar energy today. This leads to an exponential increase in solar power production ever since 2020.
And that changes the picture. The end of the fucking world is off, we’re all saved, we have enough energy to sustain our way of life and there’s no “heavy culling” when the fossil fuels run out.
The graph I showed was from a recalibration of the W3 model, done in 2023, primary difference being that instead of using a bunch of complex metrics to capture all kinds of pollution… they just went with CO2… but the whole thing has more or less been reworked as a python lib, which has been getting tweaked over the last ~15 years.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442
You may notice that energy production itself is not a primary variable on display in the graph I originally posted.
I hear what you’re saying that renewable energy is … renewable… but, there are tons and tons of natural resources that are not renewable, that are still needed for all kinds of economic processes, which we’ve already extracted all the stuff that is easy to extract, thus costs rise if you want to keep extracting the stuff that’s harder to get to.
Its not just the energy sources. Its … everything non renewable, every input material resource. Probably the biggest one is industrialized agriculture.
Sure, we could go back to not using the soil as a sponge + nitrate fixing fertilizers, and go back to crop rotation that fixes those nutrients naturally.
… and then 4 billion people can’t afford food, and starve to death.
No amount of cheap solar energy solves the problem of agricultural input costs going up and up, and more and more arable land becoming nonarable due to climate change and increasing amounts of increasingly severe adverse weather events and climate driven disasters.
According to Jim Hansen and Paul Beckworth, we’re looking at +1.7C by 2027, +2.0C by 2030-32.
We’re now in the stage of the climate crisis where half the IPCC identified tipping points start tipping each other and compounding, within roughly the next 5 to 10 years.
We already blew past 1.5C, and the world is now more geopolitically unstable than it was 10 or 20 years ago, not less.
Entire generation: [looks at step 1] “… nah…”
I applied to like 60 places and the only places I got interviews at were McDonald’s and Waffle House at first. Considering what I’ve heard, I got lucky compared to a lot of people, good luck.
I got a job at Amazon driving a van lmao. They are hiring literally anyone with a license and not on hard drugs. They didn’t test for alcohol or weed.
