I have been lucky in my career.

I finished school, did my A-levels, walked into an apprenticeship, skipped university, and worked my way up through the ranks at the same company that took me on fresh out of exams.

I know how rare that is now. In today’s job market, luck like that feels almost mythical.

I have seen how hard it is for young people trying to find work through my partner. We have been together for five years. During that time, my career has grown while he chose to go to university, determined to better his education and land a good job.

That did not happen. He finished his course in June, got the grades he had hoped for, and was ready to leave behind the endless bar shifts and finally start a stable nine-to-five doing something he cared about.

But six months later, he has only just found a job in a field he had never even heard of, simply because it was the only place that responded to his applications.

Right after graduating, he threw himself into job hunting. He applied for roles across the industries that were supposed to welcome people like him, from graphic design to social media management, the ones we are told young people are made for.

It is no exaggeration to say he applied for one hundred jobs. He reworked his CV over and over, tailored every application, and tried to sell himself as best he could.

By September’s graduation ceremony, he still had not heard a thing. Not one interview, not even a polite rejection. He was clinging on to the occasional shift at a local pub that could not offer him regular hours, just to stay afloat.

I sat in the crowd that day, beaming with pride as I watched him walk across the stage to collect his degree, but I could not help looking around at the thousands of other graduates in their gowns and wondering how many of them actually had jobs waiting for them, jobs that matched their degrees, or even jobs at all. It turns out, most did not.

Speaking to his friends, it was the same story everywhere: moving back in with parents, trying to scrape together some sort of income, watching their independence vanish overnight. Imagine that. One minute you have your own place and life at university, the next you are back in your childhood bedroom, wondering what went wrong.

They are retreating home, back to part-time shifts, back to wondering why they ever bothered. We tell them education opens doors, but most of those doors are locked.

He did not just chase dream jobs either. He applied for everything: shops, supermarkets, McDonald’s, Superdrug, and pubs. He has spent years working in hospitality, but even there, silence. Not even a “thanks for applying”.

It was brutal watching him lose confidence, start questioning whether he should have stayed at Asda instead of going to university in the first place. More educated now, yes, but somehow worse off.

“I was just fed up,” he said. “It is soul-destroying. You spend years doing what you are told will get you a good job, and then nobody even replies to your applications. It makes you wonder what the point of it all was.”

So why is this happening?

According to the Economics Observatory, a UK-based project that connects academic research with government policy to make sense of big economic questions, unemployment is climbing, hitting its highest level since the pandemic.

Some say it is because companies are tightening up ahead of changes to National Insurance contributions and minimum wage rises. Others point to the growing impact of AI, shrinking entry-level opportunities before people even get a foot in the door.

With nowhere else to turn, he went to the Job Centre, desperate for guidance. He was told it is “the biggest job drought we have ever seen” and to keep applying and come back in three weeks. Exactly what you want to hear when you are already at rock bottom.

Then, out of the blue, he got a response to one of the many applications he had sent through Indeed: a trial shift, an interview, and finally, an offer for an admin and data role. The relief was enormous, for him, for me and for our families.

But even with that win, he still feels defeated. Why could he not get a job in the industry he studied for? Why was he not good enough? What did he do wrong?

I do not have those answers. What I do know is that he is not alone. This is not one person’s bad luck; it is a generation-wide problem that we keep trying to ignore.

And if we are not careful, we will lose a whole wave of bright, qualified people before they even get started.

We will lose their potential, not because they are lazy or entitled, but because the job market would rather pay for cheap, careless AI output than invest in real human talent. Many will end up back in hospitality or retail, doing honest, necessary work, but shut out from the careers they trained and hoped for.