Want me to vote for you? Then address my issues
GenZ-er shares his thoughts on why “youth” are disenfranchised with politics
By Xavier Lewis
This is part of a weekly series of articles on the issues that are most affecting Hoosiers as we approach the midterm elections. We are featuring Hoosiers across urban and rural areas as well as young, middle-aged, and senior age groups.
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Despite earning a degree in political science from Purdue University in 2023 and real experience working in politics, I fear that I will never be able to find a position that offers a living wage in my chosen career path.
The barriers to finding a job for young people today are numerous. Young people across the country struggle with the same thing, regardless of background, finding a position that pays them enough to live the middle class life. Politicians need to understand this issue and address it if they ever hope to win our vote.
The playbook for success has changed.
Though the job market for young people is inhospitable even with a college degree, I don’t blame all the adults who raised and taught me to seek a college degree. They advised me based on a formula that had worked for decades: more education = job security and higher wages. Even as the rate of societal and political change increased, we were told to follow this formula:
1)Graduate high school.
2) Get a college degree.
3) Get a job right out of college.
4) Rent for a few years and then buy a home (hopefully with a partner) and settle into the middle-class lifestyle.
That was the guidebook parents gave us. The promise? If we followed those directions and stuck to a formula that had worked for decades, we, too, could obtain the same standard of living or even better.
However, the pace of technological change has run far ahead of political change, and the old formula for success doesn’t apply. Achieving success now feels akin to building a plane while you’re flying it. For young people, this means uncertainty and unpredictability are the norm. Predicting what financial situation you will be in even just a year from now can be impossible.
My reality was brutal.
Three years ago while finishing up my degree, I began my job search. I applied to dozens of government and NGO jobs, but I never received an offer. I figured I just needed some work experience. I volunteered for a small city council race, which led to a job as a campaign manager for two 2024 state House races. Given my early job search woes, I thought I had won the lottery. Here was the experience I needed.
What I quickly found, though, was something many other young people struggle with post-graduation: a degree AND work experience no longer guarantee job offers or financial security. I resumed my job search as the campaign role ended, but my newly-gained experience wasn’t enough—even for entry level positions that didn’t require a college degree.
No matter where I applied, I was either rejected or never heard back.
I needed a job — any job.
Soon, the realities of life took over. I had bills to pay. The pressure intensified, and my focus shifted from finding a job in my desired field to finding anything that let me pay my bills. Over the next year, I took positions in everything from set building to bartending to food service to constituent outreach to census taking. Each job was grueling in its own way; none offering the pay I needed to cover rent and the most basic necessities. None required me to use the skills I paid for at college.
All the while, I continued applying for job after job to find one whose salary reflected the fact that I had a college degree. Pay wasn’t my only concern either. I needed a job to have healthcare insurance so I would have access to a doctor. I sought anything that would get me the pay and healthcare I need, in a direction I wanted to go.
Finally, almost three years after graduating, I found a full-time position as a personal banker at a local bank. It is a position I am grateful for, yet it still feels like a life vest in an ocean. It’s holding me up, but it’s still not something I feel secure in or that uses my skillset. Given my experience with job searches, I worry the longer I’m outside the field I want to work in, the less likely I will achieve that goal.
My experience mirrors those of many Gen Z grads.
I spoke with my friends about this piece; many of them shared worse or equivalent experiences. Job hunting has become its own exhausting full-time job. After spending years studying for our degrees of choice, we find ourselves struggling to find a job even in retail.
This is not for lack of trying.
Most of my fellow age mates spend months, a year, or even a few years, applying to hundreds of jobs through online job boards. We’ve all received the same two well-meaning suggestions from older generations on how to improve our chances of success.
Like the political landscape though, what worked 10 years ago is no longer the path to success.
These two pieces of advice are out-of-date:
Apply in-person. The old formula prescribed that a company may be more responsive or respect you more for physically going to their office to apply. Today’s reality is that most organizations and recruiters don’t accept in-person applications anymore. They haven’t for a long time. I was told a number of times —after putting on my best suit, printing my resume and walking into a building—that I should apply online. In-person resumes are not accepted.
Go to recruiting events. Upon arrival, you quickly see that each company and recruiter is being bombarded with hundreds of elevator pitches and resumes. You also quickly discover that jobs are reduced to a list of requirement. These two factors mean recruiting events mostly yield disappointment.
A friend of mine, a veteran with a mechanical engineering degree, shared a common job fair story. He made the rounds of the booths. At one booth, he strongly connected with the recruiter over their shared hobbies and how those skills apply to his experience within the field. However, his GPA was lower than their target; this immediately eliminated him. The in-person connection was irrelevant as was the shared background.
Bottom-line: Metrics now determines hiring, regardless of the story connected to the person applying for the job. Despite having an engineering degree, my friend still had to apply for over 100 jobs before getting an offer from one.
Online is no better.
Today, to find a job you have to complete an online application process. Many of these applications take hours to complete. Most companIes require job applicants to set up an online account before even starting the application process. Once you are set up, you are asked to enter all the information found on your resume into their form fields. After you do that, you must then still attach your resume, along with a cover letter attach and, possibly, other additional documents they require. Diligence tells you that you should spend time customizing your resume and cover letter to the specific position you are applying for, which requires still more time.
None of these actions ensure human eyes will ever see your application. AI is part of the reason, but it’s not the whole reason.
Ghost jobs are prolific.
Ghost jobs are job postings put out by legitimate companies (and the U.S. government) for various reasons: 1) to gauge the labor market, 2) to collect data, and/or 3) to show company growth without actually hiring.
An estimated 30% of online job postings are ghost jobs. The monthly jobs report shared out by our government includes these nonexistent jobs. For every 10 applications a job seeker fills out, 3 of them may be for bogus jobs. Applicants waste countless hours and energy feeding data to a machine to apply for jobs that aren’t real.
Still other positions advertised online are flat-out scams. These scams play out even through “reputable” websites like LinkedIn. In one instance, I unwittingly walked into a job interview for a multi-level marketing firm. On a different occasion, I had an interview with an AI agent that told me I needed to accept a large check to pay for new equipment I would need to perform the job before a job could begin.
AI favors employers, not job searchers.
Even if you identify a legitimate position for which you’re qualified, most job applications are now run through an AI filter, not a human. Your measure as a worker and someone people can work with is second to your ability to optimize your resume to match the exact qualifications and wording that AI is looking for.
This automation of resume screening eliminates entry-level people from consideration for most jobs. It favors those with established careers. Worse, regardless of AI’s actually ability to do a position, many employers are preemptively eliminating entry-level jobs because AI can replace the human.
College graduates who expected or hoped to start a career instead find themselves stocking shelves or waiting tables. Of the Gen Z young professionals who do find a job in their field, many will tell you, “Graduating was difficult. Job hunting was harder.”
Better government policy can help.
The jobs industry changed almost overnight because of AI, yet our government’s agencies and political figures remains calcified. They are stuck in their endless back and forth between Red and Blue without either party producing change that helps young people.
This discrepancy between what politicians promise and what they ended up actually delivering make civic participation challenging. Why should I bother with politics that haven’t changed and won’t change when I need to focus on finding some kind of job? Why bother engaging when all that’s ever on offer are politicians triple my age talking about issues that won’t help me find work or address the issues I care about?
Want youth to vote? Then address their needs.
I’ve worked in and around local politics for years. I cannot name a time when I’ve heard a politician talk about the issue of ghost jobs or the lack of incentives for businesses to hire people for entry level positions.
Yet these two issues are huge for young people. They directly impact our ability to afford life’s basics: rent, utilities, and food. They stand directly in the way of our hopes for home ownership and a potential family.
The problem is NOT “youthful impatience.”
As the cost of living for every age group goes up, the anchors holding young people back from engaging more in the economy and society as a whole accumulate. Just like older Americans being priced out of their own homes, young people struggle to afford necessities — as well as to pay back student loans.
As long as young people are unable to find work that allows them to leave behind these anchors, the economy as a whole becomes more vulnerable and reliant on debt or a few goods and services. Low wages for the youth also ensure that there is a higher tax burden on older individuals for healthcare programs and social security. These are two social programs that only work when a large young, active base of support exists.
Share your plans for removing barriers.
If you want me – and my peers - to vote for you, talk about how you will take down barriers for young people to have their voices represented in politics. Talk about the needs of the youth who are just now starting a career and not just the needs of our parents and grandparents. It isn’t an either or. Speak to the issues young people of all ideologies care about: finding good jobs, apartments that don’t cost half their paycheck each month, and homes that they can afford. Explain how you will improve these things; it will do more to bring out the youth than posting a quirky TikTok.
Youth don’t have hope.
When I talk to people my age about the future, regardless of their income level or politics, we all have a gallows humor about what’s to come. Many of us already contribute to 401Ks and brokerages outside of our work. Many are planning for home ownership or maybe children, but all these plans feel more like a reflex. We see that AI’s progress threatens the very idea of working to live; we are aware of climate change’s ever looming threat.
Our planning for homes and children is what we were taught what to do, not what any of us believe is possible.
There is no single issue that will drive young people out to vote, but helping us find good jobs is a good start.
In my experience we are especially diverse in our views and stances in ways that make applying Republican or Democratic labels unworkable. We’re one of the most informed generations; we are very aware of what politics looks like and how it impacts us today. To earn our vote, you need to help us be hopeful for the future.
Many of those my age desperately crave a hopeful vision of the future. It’s why candidates like Mamdani and AOC have succeeded. More than policy, they give young Americans a reason to hope again.
Our local politicians can do the same.
Please share your thoughts. We want to hear from you.
GenXer here. Thank you for sharing your story. The formula for success has been broken for some time but nobody really talked about it. The reason college degrees were promoted so strongly by my generation was largely because, when recruiters began using computers, the initial filter was College Degree Y/N. As much as we talk about trade schools and apprenticeships, this initial filter has not changed for a majority of employers (and trade schools/apprenticeships did not count). Add AI to the mix, and we now have an industry that has AI generated resumes and cover letters interacting with AI recruiters. It's kinda like, "I'll have my AI meet your AI for coffee to discuss whether or not I'm even necessary."
We need policies that reinvest in entrepreneurship and small businesses, reinvesting in small towns and local communities, curtailing private equity ownership of *everthing*; Invest in arts education as an economic driver, not a "nice to have" extracurricular option; return to creating government jobs as investments in our federal, state, and local infrastructure; establish universal single-payer healthcare that removes the cost burden from employers (so they can offer more positions at higher wages); recognize the symbiotic nature of our economy and the power of ownership (if folks cannot afford your products, you don't have a business); stop student debt usury; seriously explore universal basic income from a community reinvestment perspective (especially rural communities); get broadband internet everywhere; return to a robust remote workforce; favor cooperatives in housing and businesses; strengthen unions...the list goes on.
I work with dozens of candidates through the Indiana Rural Summit [https://indianaruralsummit.org]. We are having these conversations every day. Until we elect leaders who demand change, we are stuck in this ever increasing spiral of extraction, exploitation, and dead-ends. It kinda feels like the chicken and egg situation. We need new leaders but without votes, they cannot win. If we do not have new leadership, people do not see change, so they do not vote, because it doesn't seem like voting matters. We must first stop this negative reinforcement that disempowers us. What does voting and civic engagement as a form of resistance look like? How do we create the world we want to see when the growing majority has been starved of the ability to imagine differently because survival mode doesn't have time to dream?
I ask these questions as a mom of a Millenial, GenZ, and GenAlpha.
As a GenXer who was laid off twice in 2022, I sympathize. Our daughter has a degree that should make her a great employee, but she's trying to survive off what she makes as a barista while we put her through grad school. And that degree is no guarantee of anything either. Meanwhile the rich just keep getting richer, and our politicians keep taking their donations. People in the wealthiest nation the world has ever known should not have to live this way.