The job market is especially tough for recent grads
Ashley Terrell, a 2024 University of Hawaii graduate with multiple business degrees, struggled to find work in her desired field despite months of networking and applications. She ended up in retail and hotel jobs before being laid off, reflecting a broader trend affecting half of her graduating class. Her story illustrates the difficult job market facing recent college graduates in 2024-2025.
Summary
Ashley Terrell, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, represents a growing cohort of college graduates struggling to find meaningful employment in their fields of study. Coming from a family where college attendance was a firm expectation rather than a choice, Ashley pursued an ambitious academic path, earning degrees in marketing, international business, entrepreneurship, and management by 2024.
Despite her multi-disciplinary education and proactive job search efforts — including months of networking and submitting applications before graduation — Ashley was unable to secure a role in her desired field of marketing or startups. The only job offer she received was from power tool manufacturer Techtronic Industries, which placed her in a promotional retail role at a local Home Depot for $25 an hour. The work involved stocking Milwaukee and Ryobi products and assembling display sets on the sales floor, far removed from her career aspirations.
Ashley subsequently found employment at a local Marriott hotel, but was laid off in September 2025. At the time of the interview, she remained unemployed and actively job searching. Despite her difficult circumstances, Ashley expressed cautious optimism, though she noted that rapid, widespread changes across seemingly all industries were making the job market particularly challenging. She also highlighted that approximately half of her graduating classmates were still jobless when they walked at commencement, suggesting this is a systemic issue rather than an individual one, and expressing a sense of collective struggle among her peers.
Key Insights
- Ashley reports that despite months of networking and job applications before graduation, the only offer she received was a retail promotional role at Home Depot for $25/hour — well below her marketing and business career aspirations.
- Ashley claims that approximately half of her graduating classmates did not have a job when they walked at commencement, suggesting widespread underemployment among her peer group rather than an isolated personal struggle.
- Ashley describes the job market disruption as affecting 'all industries, not just one,' indicating she perceives the employment crisis as broad and structural rather than sector-specific.
- Ashley's college attendance was framed by her parents as a non-negotiable expectation, reflecting a generational belief in higher education as a guaranteed pathway to success — a belief her job search experience appears to have challenged.
- Ashley expresses a sense of collective helplessness among her graduating peers, stating 'how can we help each other when none of us are really thriving,' highlighting a breakdown in the traditional peer-network advantage of college graduates.
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] For 23-year-old Ashley Terrell, going to college wasn't optional. >> For my parents, college was an expectation. It wasn't something they were asking me to do nicely. It was something that I was expected to do out of high school. >> Ashley attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She graduated in 2024 with a degree in marketing, international business, entrepreneurship, and management. >> After college, I hope to [music] kind of work either like at a startup doing something marketing related ideally. >> But despite months of networking and [0:30] filling out job applications in the run-up to graduation, the only offer Ashley received [music] was from power tool manufacturer Techtronic Industries promoting their products at a local…
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