"Even a Princeton Engineering PhD Unemployed for Two Years"... Severe U.S. Job Crisis

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the story of a man who earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the prestigious Princeton University in 2024, yet remains unemployed after applying to more than 2,300 positions for over two years.

The subject of the story is 30-year-old Dr. Jack Weiss, a native of Salt Lake City, Utah, who is currently living at his childhood home with his parents.

He graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and entered the Ph.D. program at Princeton University in 2018, where he researched chemical principles and intermolecular interactions.

His research on ice formation was even cited as an example of the scientific application of machine learning by the Nobel Committee when it announced the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024.

Initially, Dr. Weiss sent out numerous applications targeting research positions at pharmaceutical companies or prestigious postdoctoral roles at national laboratories, but most went unanswered, with only occasional rejections.

Later, he broadened his search regardless of industry or region, frequently failing to even secure an interview. Eventually, he even applied for a food preparation and cooking position at a company selling frozen crab cakes, but received no response.

Hoping that networking might help, he reached out by phone to alumni from Princeton and Rice universities, but the assistance often boiled down to little more than "check the company's job board again."

In January of this year, he took on a part-time job earning 70 dollars (93,000 won) per hour at a startup that hired specialists to train artificial intelligence (AI).

At first, he worked 20 hours some weeks and only 4 hours others, but days without work steadily increased until jobs dried up for weeks at a time, and in mid-March, he was notified of his contract termination via a group chat message.

Dr. Weiss is also considering law school and plans to take the admissions test in November, while also trying his hand at entrepreneurship by designing a drone powered by AI to remove invasive weeds.

He said, "If you believe something has true value, you have to step up and realize that value yourself."

Dr. Weiss's parents, both physicians, remain shocked by the reality of their son's employment struggles.

His mother, Holly Carvers, reviewed her son's applications to see if there was any issue that might make employers hesitate, noting that nothing stood out and the applications seemed well-written. "It's truly unexpected," she said. "I don't know how to make sense of this situation."

His father, John Weiss, said, "I never in a million years thought this kid would struggle."

Journalist Lindsey Ellis, who wrote the article, explained that when she first interviewed Dr. Weiss, it was late last year, just before his 30th birthday, and she had set out to meet job seekers across all 50 U.S. states.

She wrote, "After interviewing dozens of people across all 50 states, Weiss's story particularly stuck with me because it vividly illustrates the severe freeze that has paralyzed the labor market over the past few years."

She explained that the current U.S. job market is in a so-called "low-hiring, low-firing" environment, adding, "Many people have jobs, but they do not leave them, limiting opportunities for others. Those without jobs feel as though they are locked out of the fortress, unable to break into a growing economy."

According to The Wall Street Journal, recent U.S. employment reports fell significantly short of market expectations.

While the unemployment rate remains low, the proportion of long-term unemployed individuals who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more reached its highest level in about a decade this summer, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath.

In an August Gallup poll, only 34 percent of Americans said it was a "good time to find a quality job."

In a Pew Research Center survey released last month, more than 70 percent of U.S. respondents expected overall jobs to decrease due to AI.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.