Shielding kids from 'jobpocalypse'

Internships and work-study programmes are some ways to stay employable in a tough job market

- Abel Ang

The university class of 2025 is graduating into a “jobpocalypse”.

The term coined in a YouTube video by the Financial Times combines the word “jobs” and “apocalypse”, summing up the economic reality that many fresh graduates and their parents are grappling with at the moment.

The caption of the British newspaper's clip reads: “Entry-level jobs are disappearing. The promise of Al’s workplace abilities and economic uncertainties have caused many companies to take pause while graduate-level unemployment is at an all-time high.”

In Parliament in September, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said that significantly fewer graduates are taking breaks or pursuing further studies, putting more fresh graduates into the same tight job pool.

Based on statistics he shared, this resulted in 6,000 unemployed 2025 graduates, compared with 4,300 unemployed 2024 graduates — an increase of 1,700.

He recognised that much of the anxiety in the public discourse is driven not just by youth themselves, but also by parents worried about their children’s prospects.

While Dr Tan urged parents to stay calm, I believe that they have a legitimate worry. Recession cohorts in developed economies have shown that youth entering the market at an inopportune time could suffer persistent wage and skill penalties that follow throughout their professional careers.

Research by Professor Gianni De Fraja, who teaches economics at the University of Nottingham, found that each month of unemployment between ages 18 and 20 reduces lifetime earnings by approximately 1.2 per cent a year, a loss that persists well into middle age.

The study, published in 2021, was done using data from the United Kingdom’s Lifetime Labour Market Database. It covered 650,000 individuals, who formed a representative sample of those born from 1960 to 1967 working there.