Hunter Howell, 22 and a recent business administration graduate from Elmhurst University in suburban Chicago, has submitted more than 1,700 job applications. But in his 10 months of job searching, he received only one offer.
“The initial feeling was: what the hell is going on? What the hell is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong?” Howell said Fortune.
Howell expressed his frustrations on TikTok, where a video explaining his job search woes has garnered more than 700,000 views.
“If you live in the United States right now, you understand that we are going through a disaster in the job market,” Howell says.
Howell explains that by mid-March he had sent out 1,600 applications but had received only three offers for contractor positions and only one full-time offer: a paid position selling phones at Costco, which would make $41,000 a year.
Howell says he has applied for jobs at all levels, from marketing and management to retail and fast food. Since she posted her viral TikTok on March 22, she’s applied for over a hundred more jobs (over 1,700 total) and still hasn’t had any luck.
Howell says he believes employers are “playing games” with him and other young candidates. After having an initial interview with a potential employer, he says, he will often spend weeks in various interview processes. He received rejections after four interviews or simply never heard back from hiring managers.
A self-admitted “potty mouth,” Howell had some choice words for companies he felt were dragging him down.
“If you’re a hiring manager or do hiring practices, fuck you,” Howell says in his TikTok, raising his middle finger.
Behind Howell’s frustration is real confusion. He said he wondered if there was something wrong with him or his approach to applying for jobs, despite having started his job search months before his December graduation and taking advice from friends and family.
“I have a college degree, no criminal record, work experience, references, a tailored resume,” Howell said Fortune. “It’s so disconcerting. It’s a mistery.”
But even stranger to Howell than his inability to land a good job was the response he received from his post: TikTok explicitly intended to disdain hiring managers across all industries actually drew them to Howell.
“I have a lot of them [direct messages] from people like, “Hey, like, I’m so-and-so with this company.” We are hiring for this role. We want to bring you in,” Howell said. “And I say, wait, What?”
Howell says he has reached out to hiring managers in his direct messages, but has still had little luck finding reliable job postings. He attributes the attention to the virality of the video or to companies simply trying to get good public relations or save face. While the popularity of her TikTok hasn’t landed Howell a job yet, she has found solace in her comments section, where dozens of young people have shared their anguish.
“A lot of people in my comments say: ‘Yes, this happened to me. You are not alone. Keep it up,” Howell said.
A bleak job market is ‘disincentivising Gen Z’
Howell is one of many members of Gen Z who use TikTok to share their despondency and job-seeking rejections. Among the other frustrated Zoomers is Lohanny Santos, a 26-year-old with two college degrees and able to speak three languages who still can’t find a job after going door-to-door handing out resumes to find work.
“It’s honestly a little embarrassing because I’m literally applying for minimum wage jobs,” Santos said in a January TikTok viewed more than 25.6 million times. “And some of them say, ‘We’re not hiring’ and they say, ‘What?’ This is not what I expected.
These stories of frustration paint a picture of young people’s attitudes towards trying to enter the world of work. The rate of positive job market outlook among entry-level workers fell to 46.1%, the lowest since 2016, according to Glassdoor’s Employee Confidence Index released Tuesday. According to a May 2023 McKinsey & Company survey of 1,952 respondents, 74% of Generation Z were concerned about job security even after finding a job.
“It’s very disincentivising for Gen Z as a whole, as a young generation,” Howell said. “It’s very demoralizing.”
Gen Z’s pessimism about the job search is justifiable: The job search has become cutthroat, according to ZipRecruiter’s most recent quarterly new hire survey. Of 1,500 respondents, 46% said they found a job in less than a month, down 60% from the previous quarter. Only just over half said they viewed their job search experience as positive, down 10% month over month.
But the collective difficulty in looking for work doesn’t tell the whole story. The number of job openings in the United States remained historically high, according to Tuesday’s report from the Department of Labor, which showed 8.76 million job vacancies in February, up slightly from 8.75 million in January. However, the 3.8% unemployment rate also reached its highest level in about two years, with young people usually bearing the brunt of any negative news on the job market.
Until he lands that still-elusive job, Howell says, he finds comfort in knowing that if he still can’t jump-start his career, at least maybe it’s not entirely his fault.
“Selfishly, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one, I guess, going through this crisis,” he said.