The University of North Texas' Administration Building clocktower marks the center of campus, which serves over 45,000 thousand students. Gabriella Ramirez
Graduation is supposed to be a celebration, but for college seniors today, the celebration may come with a sense of dread and anxiety of having to find a job in a competitive job market.
When MaKayla Wright first started attending college in 2018, she didn’t think she would still be in college today. She began at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where she’s originally from. Wright has since moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and transferred to the University of North Texas.
Her college journey is anything but traditional. Her plan to join the art industry after graduation as a museum curator or an archivist is proving to be difficult. She said she has received few responses to job applications.
In such a highly competitive field, she said it’s hard to get a foot in the door. Wright has even asked acquaintances to help out with little to no luck.
“I had a coworker whose wife is an archivist and I even asked her for help on what to do, and she pretty much just said, ‘Keep on trying,’” Wright said. “But ‘keep on trying’ is kind of difficult when you keep getting ignored at every turn.”
Wright admits that she’s been anxious leading up to her last semester.
“I’ve been going to college for my bachelor’s since 2018 and I will not be graduating until 2026, So I have a lot of anxiety because I just keep thinking, ‘What if I don’t make it?’”
With multiple factors at play from unforgiving economic factors to a competitive job market, this uncertainty of being unable to find a job post-graduation has transformed this milestone into a mountain of stress only fueling mental health problems among college graduates.
The UNT Career Center has seen more than 200 students during drop-in hours this semester, said Natalie Rahija, a graduate assistant.
“I think the best thing someone can do is to talk to someone about their future career whether it be their career coach or another career ambassador since it’s more peer to peer,” Rahija said. “Being able to understand more about yourself and what you want to do is a huge step in the right direction.”
Resources from the Career Center at UNT are not just limited to students currently attending, but to alumni as well.
Many universities, including UNT, also offer counseling and testing services. These services can include individual or group therapy as well as workshops. However, students report that it is often difficult to get an appointment because of ever-increasing demand.
Madisyn Rison, a business analytics and psychology major who graduated from Southern Methodist University in May 2026 said her biggest worry post-graduation was finding a job.
Madisyn Rison pictured at her graduation from Southern Methodist University. Courtesy of Madisyn Rison
“I applied to so many jobs and didn’t hear back, and it didn’t help that it’s a very bad time for that market,” Rison said. “I would go to an interview and every interviewer mentioned, ‘Yeah it’s kind of rough for the market, we’re not hiring right now, we’re hiring when the market is better.”
Rison now has a job in residential construction and it took her roughly six to seven months to get an offer.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the labor market softening is hitting recent college graduates harder than usual. Back in 2019, the unemployment rate averaged 3.25%, compared to the 2025 average of 4.59%.
Adding in the fact that college tuition has increased significantly in the last 20 years, recent college graduates are thrown into a competitive job market, expected to pay off student loans. It’s no surprise graduates are experiencing mental health issues. The cost of tuition in the 21st century has actually increased 41.7% faster than the cost of inflation, says the Education Data Initiative.
For Wright these economic pressures translate into feelings of anxiety and social comparison.
“Everybody that I graduated high school with, about two years ago they were graduating college, they already had jobs,” Wright said. “I just feel really behind sometimes.”
Rison said she felt a similar way.
“I feel like a lot of people in my graduating class were trying to go into consulting and finance and I know nothing about that hiring process,” Rison said. “I kept applying to random jobs and just felt like I was on my own.”
Gabriella Ramirez is a senior at the University of North Texas majoring in digital and print journalism and criminal justice. Ramirez is set to graduate in December 2025 and plans to go to law school in the future. Until then she will be working as a legal assistant with a defense attorney.
