Gen Z Years: Lewis Maleh says 58% of graduates still job hunting

During gen z years, the first job is taking longer to land. A Kickresume report cited by Fortune found that about 58% of students who graduated between 2024 and 2025 were still looking for their first job.

Lewis Maleh, chief executive of staffing and recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, said the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise to students. He told Fortune: "Universities aren’t deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise."

Bentley Lewis and Kickresume

The gap with earlier graduates is sharp. About 25% of graduates in previous years, including millennial and Gen X predecessors, struggled to land work after college. Nearly 40% of previous graduates secured full-time work in time for their graduation ceremony, while just 12% of 2024 and 2025 graduates could say the same.

Kickresume researchers also said around 20% of job-seekers had been searching for work for at least 10 to 12 months. They added: "We often tell graduates not to stress too much about their first job. It’s just a starting point, not a life sentenc".

2024 Job Interviews

The broader labor picture was harder in 2024, when around 40% of unemployed people said they did not land a single job interview. The article ties that to a market that is more uncertain, more digital, and arguably more demanding than before, with technology possibly reducing the number of entry-level roles for new graduates.

The problem sits inside a larger pool of young people who are not in education, employment, or training. There are 4.3 million young people in that group, and the number rose by 100,000 over 2025 in the U.K.

For graduates now job hunting, the practical takeaway is narrow but direct: the first role may take time, and the data in this report suggests that waiting longer than previous generations is no longer unusual.