Since graduating from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2024, Menasha Thomas has learned to navigate the swirl of networking and referrals, online job-search groups and interview processes. But after 14 months of soldiering through scores of applications, the 23-year-old has yet to put her urban planning degree to use in a full-time job.
In the meantime, she took professional certification and real estate courses to make herself more hireable, while working as a nanny and at New York City cafes. It’s been challenging but not “entirely isolating,” she said, because she knows many other recent grads also are struggling to get started professionally. She recently landed a paid internship with a real estate company, for which she feels “extremely grateful.”
Fresh research from the workforce data company Revelio Labs sheds light on the factors making it harder for applicants like Thomas: chiefly, an aging population and more people working well into their 60s and 70s, coupled with a labor market in which companies are culling roles and seeking more experienced candidates when they do hire.
The average new hire was 42 years old in 2025, according to a Revelio analysis released Jan. 6, versus 40.5 in 2022 and 4o in 2016.
Revelio Chief Economist Lisa Simon, who conducted the analysis, said that years of economic and political uncertainty, and the push to use artificial intelligence to reshape how work is done, have led employers to place a higher value on “experience, and be a little more risk averse in terms of who they’re hiring and who they’re willing to bet on in this labor market.”
It underscores the uphill battle facing younger workers in an era when “employers are just expecting candidates to hit the ground running from day one, without really giving them the opportunity to train up,” Simon said.
The share of workers 25 and younger went from 14.9 percent to 8.8 percent between 2022 and 2025, the analysis shows. Hiring inflows for this age group are down more than 45 percent compared with 2019 when, like now, the economy was deep into an expansion. In contrast, inflows for workers 65 and older are up nearly 80 percent in that time, Revelio’s data showed.
“Younger workers face fewer entry opportunities. This pattern is consistent with a labor market that is slowing, becoming more selective, and prioritizing experience over long-term potential,” the report said.
This comes as U.S. employers are pulling back on hiring: Data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that 2025 marked the worst year for the labor market since the pandemic-era recession. Jobs growth slumped to levels typically seen during economic downturns, with health care and social services among the few industries still adding roles. Unemployment stood at 4.4 percent, data showed.
Last year, employers announced 507,647 planned hires, down 34 percent from the 769,953 announced in 2024, according to data from Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a global HR and outplacement firm. It also marked the lowest year-to-date total since 2010. Employers also announced more than 1.2 million layoffs in 2025, the highest level since 2020 and a 58 percent spike from 2024, according to Challenger’s data.
Tight labor markets have tended to pull more entry-level applicants into the workforce, which in turn lowers the average age of people being hired, Simon said, but that doesn’t seem to be happening now. Evidence of older workers sticking around is starkest in occupations that are people-facing and service intensive, such as sales representatives, real estate agents and office assistants. Revelio’s data shows that the average starting age in these positions has crept up by about 2.5 years since 2015.
“These are roles where accumulated experience, interpersonal skills, and institutional knowledge are central to productivity — and where performance does not depend on keeping up with rapidly changing technical toolkits,” the report states.
These shifts come as companies are rushing to embrace AI, with firms pouring $252 billion in 2024, according to data from Stanford University, with billions more flooding into the market in 2025. Workers ages 22 to 25 have seen a 13 percent drop-off in employment in the most AI-exposed occupations since 2022, according to another recent piece of research from Stanford.
This technological change is altering how firms evaluate candidates, according to Matt Baird, a senior staff economist at LinkedIn. In today’s market, employers are “are increasingly valuing experience, judgment and people skills, areas where older workers have an advantage.”
When Kim Anderson founded GreySource — a recruiting firm geared toward older applicants — in 2022, she used to get about 25 requests a month from candidates asking for help. Now, she said, she’s seeing that many on a weekly basis.
From what she sees with her clients, Anderson suspects that “AI and economic disruption” are weighing heaviest on young workers’ job prospects.
Firms that are hiring are increasingly “looking for people that have a lot of capability organizing and leading teams,” she said, noting there’s been a “shift to skills-based hiring,” which benefits workers who have had years on the job to develop such skills as overseeing projects and managing teams.
CEOs have been blunt in telegraphing this to younger workers, cautioning that traditional career advice is now less relevant.
During a CNN appearance in November, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon urged Gen Z workers to focus on “in-demand skills” because “it’s not enough anymore to say, ‘I can work hard.’” He added that AI and coding are areas where “we know we need the skills.”
In a December interview, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky argued that having a five-year career plan is “outdated” and “a little bit foolish” in an era when workers should be more adaptable given that “technology and the labor market and everything is moving beneath you.”
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski put out an Instagram video that went viral in December telling young professionals that they should take responsibility for their own growth and career advancement, because “nobody cares about your career as much as you do.”
“This idea that there’s somebody out there who’s looking out for you, who’s going to make sure that you get that opportunity … great if it happens, but you’ve got to make things happen for yourself,” he said.
The pivot toward experience is weighing on many kinds young workers: Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that the unemployment gap between high school and college graduates shrunk to just 2.5 percentage points, nearly an all-time low, as entry-level candidates reckon with a labor market that seems to have fewer rungs near the bottom.
“The U.S. population overall is aging, and many of the older workers who are starting to retire hold senior level positions that younger workers are not able to fill,” said Nicole Bachaud, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “In the low-hire, low-fire environment that has defined much of the last year, there is little movement elsewhere in the labor market for these young workers to break in.”
Longer life expectancies are one reason the workforce is aging, Bachaud explained, because “as people live longer, they tend to delay major milestones, like marriage and retirement, and prolong life phases, like working.”
At 67, Janet Masters often hears friends in her age group talk wistfully about how they “can’t wait to retire.”
She can’t relate. She was 55 when she got a second master’s degree and — after decades working with Fortune 500 companies — switched to working with start-ups. Masters, who lives in Colorado, says continuing to work “allows me to actually explore and learn and grow.” And, she added with a laugh, she also enjoys “seeing the money come in.”
“It feels good to continue to develop my skill set,” Masters said. “I’m not ready to say, ‘This is what I learned; this is all I knew,’ shut the book and go off and travel the world.”
Though some older Americans are working “because they have the time, and they want to,” there’s also the “drive of necessity,” Bachaud said, noting that inflation has driven up the cost of living significantly since 2019. “Many older Americans are ill-equipped financially to sustain themselves for a long retirement, keeping many active in the labor force for longer.”
Inflation has driven up the price of necessities like food and health care in recent years, and it has substantially pushed up housing costs: The median U.S. home price has risen nearly $100,000 since 2019 and is now more than $410,000, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
Debra Whitman, chief public policy officer at AARP, noted that there’s been a recent rise in “unretirement,” where workers rejoin the labor force sometime after retiring. Financial needs are a primary driver in retirees returning to the labor force, she said, but others keep working because they’re not ready to give up the sense of purpose and identity they get from work.
“We’re realizing that work doesn’t necessarily stop at one age,” Whitman said.
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