So, I’m staring at this piece from Forbes, and it’s got a title that sounds like a bad folk song: “The Wreck Of The Class Of 2025.” Catchy, in a morbid sort of way. Reminds me of the faces I used to see shuffling into the morning after a night that went sideways. Only this ain’t just one bad night; it’s the whole goddamn future for these young pups with their shiny, useless diplomas.
They even drag in Gordon Lightfoot, comparing these poor bastards to the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald. High art for a high-speed disaster, I guess. Twenty-nine souls on that ore freighter, and now a whole generation paddling in shit creek without a paddle, or even a decent job offer. The article says they “kept on going. It was all they knew how to do.” Sounds about right. Like lemmings with student loans.
The numbers, Christ, the numbers. They always throw numbers at you to make the horror seem official. Unemployment for college grads? Skyrocketed 40% in two years, hitting 5.8%. For the first time ever, these educated hopefuls are doing worse than the national average. That’s like your prize racehorse suddenly running slower than the glue factory truck coming to pick it up. Some places, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, clocked it at a stunning 12% for grads in their 20s. Twelve percent. That’s a lot of ramen noodles and existential dread.
But here’s the real kick in the teeth, the one that makes you reach for the cheap stuff even if it’s only noon: underemployment. Sure, 94% of recent grads found some kind of paid work. Bully for them. But if they’re pouring coffee or stocking shelves – jobs they could’ve landed without drowning in debt and listening to four years of professorial windbaggery – then the main hatchway has indeed caved in, just like old Gordy sang. One study pegs it at 52% underemployed a year after graduation. Fifty-two percent. Imagine half these bright-eyed kids, fresh from academia’s teat, realizing their degree is about as valuable as a Confederate dollar. Entry-level hiring? Down 23% in five years. The ladder’s been pulled up, kids. Hope you like the view from the bottom.
And what’s the iceberg in this little maritime tragedy, the thing tearing a hole in their prospects? Our old friend, Artificial Intelligence. The same AI they’ve been hawking like a miracle cure, the solution to all our earthly woes. Turns out, it’s exceptionally good at one particular thing: making junior employees entirely superfluous. All that busy work, the stuff new hires used to cut their teeth on while learning the ropes? Automated. Gone. Vanished into the digital ether. Some venture capital prick even told a reporter, “nobody has patience or time for hand-holding in this new environment.” Of course not. More time for their goddamn stock options and silent retreats, I suppose, while the robots quietly devour the kids’ lunch.
This AI, it’s like some silent, invisible plague they unleashed in the name of “progress.” First, it writes your term papers, then it designs your bridges, then it tells you you’re not qualified to even lick the envelopes. And the geniuses in their hoodies who cooked it up? They’re probably toasting their success with organic kale smoothies, babbling about “efficiency” and “optimization” while the lines at the unemployment office get longer. Efficiency for whom, I always wonder? Not for young Gabriel Nash, who graduated and now makes YouTube videos about gaming because his 450 job applications evaporated into the digital void. Not for Peter Stuart, who reports “getting ghosted basically by everything I apply for.” Ghosted. Like a bad one-night stand, only it’s your entire future giving you the silent treatment.
Kevin Roose, some columnist for the Times, says this is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Christ, if this is the tip, the rest of it must be the size of God’s own accumulated bad karma. He’s hearing about businesses “making rapid progress toward automating entry-level work,” and AI companies racing to build “virtual workers.” Virtual workers. They don’t need smoke breaks, they don’t get hangovers, they don’t unionize or ask for a goddamn raise. Perfect little slaves for the new gilded age. Some CEO, Dario Amodei from Anthropic – sounds like a villain from a cheap spy novel – cheerily believes AI could replace half of all entry-level jobs. Half. Just like that. Poof. Gone like a fart in the wind.
And the real black comedy, the part that makes you laugh so you don’t start screaming, is that these kids are getting rejected by the very machines poised to replace them. A “remarkable” 88% of companies, they say, are already using AI to screen candidates. And then, if you’re unlucky enough to get past the robo-screener, you might get an AI interview. Picture this: some poor bastard, Kendiana Colin from Ohio State, probably practiced her answers, ironed her only decent shirt, palpitations drumming a rhythm of hope and fear. And what profound wisdom does the great digital oracle of employment impart? “Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates. Vertical bar pilates.” Over and over. Like a goddamn broken jukebox gargling nails. What in the sweet, unholy hell is that? Is it a threat? A new corporate mantra for the damned? Maybe it’s a Zen koan for the digital age: “What is the sound of one hand clapping if the other hand has been automated by a Pilates-obsessed algorithm?” The kid couldn’t figure out how to answer. Can’t blame her. I’d have probably poured my whiskey on the laptop and called it a day. Can’t even get a coherent rejection from a human anymore. Now you get gibberish from a circuit board. Progress.
So, hundreds of applications. Ghosted by man and machine. Confidence shot to hell. Gen Z, they say, has the “lowest confidence levels of any generation.” No shit. You spend your youth jumping through academic hoops, racking up debt for a piece of paper that’s rapidly depreciating, and then the robots tell you “Vertical bar pilates.” I’d lose my goddamn confidence too. Probably find it at the bottom of a bottle, where all true enlightenment eventually surfaces, however briefly.
And what happens when the game is rigged and the gatekeepers are malfunctioning fitness instructors from the digital netherworld? People start lying. Of course they do. The article mentions it, like it’s a surprise. Resume padding, phantom internships, degrees from universities that exist only in their most desperate imaginings. It’s human nature. You push people into a corner, they’ll chew their way out, or at least try to. Can’t say I blame them. When honesty gets you a stream of nonsensical exercise commands, maybe a little creative fiction is the only way to get a foot in the door before it slams shut on your fingers for good.
The longer-term forecast? Even grimmer, if you can believe it. They whisper about “criminality” – not just fibbing on a resume, but real, honest-to-God trouble. Desperate people do desperate things. Who knew? And inequality? You bet your ass it’s gonna get worse. The kids with the silver spoons, the ones whose daddies play golf with the CEOs, they’ll float. They always do. They won’t be the ones sending out 800 applications into the void or getting career advice from a psychotic algorithm. It’s the rest of ‘em, the ones who actually believed the bullshit about hard work and a fair shake, who are getting systematically fed to the sharks.
And the solutions? Oh, they’ve got solutions. The article dutifully lists them. “Accreditors must put an end to schools’ willful ignorance of employment outcomes.” Good luck waking up that corpse with a strongly worded letter. “Schools must equip young people with AI skills.” Skills for what? To maintain the bots that took their jobs? To become better cogs in a machine designed to grind them down? “Governments must dramatically scale investment in intermediaries.” More bureaucracy, more middlemen skimming their cut. President Trump’s goal of a million apprentices. A million. Cute. That’s like trying to bail out the sinking Edmund Fitzgerald with a shot glass. These kids aren’t just facing a leaky boat; they’re facing a goddamn tsunami of automation and institutional indifference.
What about being human, huh? What about learning by fucking up, by spilling cheap coffee on the TPS reports, by actually talking to another goddamn human being instead of a screen that spews cryptic fitness routines? That’s how you learn. That’s how you become something more than an input field. But no, “nobody has patience or time for hand-holding.” Easier to just plug in the robot and let the spreadsheets balance themselves. The hell with the souls, the dreams, the goddamn humanity ground up in the process.
The article whimpers about saving the “ship of state.” The ship of state? Honey, that old rust bucket’s been running on fumes, lies, and cheap whiskey for decades. This is just another gaping hole in a hull already riddled with them. What they’re really worried about is who’s gonna buy all the useless crap they’re selling if nobody has a job to pay for it.
It’s a goddamn mess. The only unfathomable thing here is how we let it get this bad, and how anyone expects these young folks to build a future on a foundation of algorithmic gibberish and shrinking opportunities. Maybe that folk singer needs to write a new verse, something a bit more brutal. Or maybe we all just need a much, much stronger drink. The piece ends with a plea: “Let’s stop this disaster… before some new folk singer writes and records an amazing and depressing song about it.” Too late, pal. The song’s already being written, not by some folkie with a guitar, but in the quiet desperation of a million rented rooms, in the tired click of a mouse sending another application into the abyss.
Stay thirsty, and try not to get interviewed by a Pilates-obsessed toaster.
Chinaski.
Source: The Wreck Of The Class Of 2025