6 charts to show your family when they ask why you don't have a new job

Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? . When your family asks why you didn't find a new job this year, show them these charts. It's been a year full of milestones for the job market - but not the good kind. Unemployment rates for 20-somethings hit their highest level in years. Kanika Mohan lost count of her job applications. With a new bachelor's degree, a slate of summer tech internships, and years of networking at campus career fairs, she hadn't expected getting a job to be this hard. "I remember waking up every single day to at least a few rejection emails, and these emails have absolutely no personalization to them," Mohan, 22, told Business Insider over the summer. "You can do three rounds of interviews, yet you'll still get a very generic, 'Sorry. You're not a good fit."' She eventually landed a role at a top tech company, but months of editing cover letters , prepping for interviews, and getting ghosted had been exhausting. And brutal job search experiences like hers aren't an outlier - they've become the norm. The job market in the US hit some major milestones this year. Unfortunately for the dozens of job seekers Business Insider has heard from, they weren't the good kind. AI, economic uncertainty, and a shift toward employer power have been felt across the workforce. Tyler Sorenson knows this all too well. The Gen Zer was so frustrated by limited job vacancies and slow replies to his online applications that he began leaving paper résumés at local businesses. "I literally just had to walk into that store and hand them an actual résumé for them to even take a look at me," he said in the summer. For him, that actually ended up yielding results: He was able to bypass the onslaught of AI applications and get directly to a human. It's part of just how topsy-turvy the job hunt has become. The economic situation has everyone feeling stuck: Companies are pulling back on hiring, while people with a steady paycheck are feeling too cautious to make a move. It's culminating in a frozen job market - and Americans are feeling the chill. The number of job openings for each unemployed person has tightened Millions of people are struggling to get a job - the unemployment rate as of November is the highest since 2021. Meanwhile, job openings have cooled off 37% from their high point in 2022. "This job market is terrifying," Hilary Nordland, a Gen X job seeker told Business Insider over the summer. "It's a black hole that makes you question everything - and I don't see a clear path through." The number of job openings for each unemployed person has come way down over the past few years - from two openings per unemployed person in 2022 to one this past September. The number of people unemployed briefly surpassed job opportunities in July and August, which hasn't happened since the economic disruptions caused...

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