I’m getting mail over on Substack from parents of recent graduates who don’t understand the current job market. Some of them assume their kids can’t be trying hard enough and others are wringing their hands believing the young people are forever doomed to unemployment. I think there is a space between “try harder” and “poor you”. Either position leaves a young person more stuck. As a parent, you’ve got to be careful not to add shame to disappointment. The more you chase, the more shame you’ll add and less they’re likely to do.
Aim to be supportive rather than be a rescuer. Rescuing means doing for them what they can do for themselves. Support means cheering them on and giving input they have asked for and cannot yet do for themselves. Rescue can feel like love to the rescuer, but the message received may be “you cannot manage this, so I had better manage it for you”. Someone whose confidence is already being knocked about by rejection needs opportunities to act, recover and try another route, not evidence that their parents can manage adult life better than they can.
Parents also need to understand that the labour market their children have entered is not the one they entered. LinkedIn and the Government’s AI and Future of Work Unit reported in June that UK hiring was 14% lower in April than a year before, and 30 of the 38 entry-level occupations they tracked were declining. Some of the steepest falls were in occupations parents have traditionally thought of as good graduate beginnings: accountant, down 29%; graphic designer, 28%; software engineer, 27%; data analyst, 15%; legal assistant, 14%. A factor is that AI can now do some of the information-processing work once handed to juniors.
Then there are the industries graduates have wanted to enter for decades, which are now offering fewer footholds than ever. Bectu surveyed more than 3,600 television workers last year and found 45% of drama crew, 46% of unscripted workers and 45% of commercials staff were out of work at the time of the survey. The Reuters Institute found permanent contracts among UK journalists fell from 74% in 2015 to 65% in 2023, while freelancing rose from 17% to 28%. Advertising agencies belonging to the IPA cut headcount by 6.8% in 2025, and only 43.4% said they employed graduate trainees, apprentices or school-leaver apprentices, down from 56% the year before.
The old advice of “get your foot in the door and work your way up” has become less reliable because, in some places, there are fewer doors and the bottom rung is disappearing. Law will need lawyers and accountancy will need accountants, but if software does more of the research, checking and first drafts that beginners once did, it does mean fewer entry-level jobs.
Parents tend to want the first rung of the ladder to be a recognisable step, to reassure us, but children may have to build part of the ladder themselves
At the same time, work is growing in places many parents haven’t heard of and don’t recognise as careers. Cybersecurity employed about 69,600 people across 2,603 UK firms in 2025, according to the government’s 2026 sector analysis; employment had risen by about 2,300 in a year and the number of cyber firms by 20%. Skills England projects that 30 priority occupations in digital and technology could grow by 239,000 jobs between 2025 and 2035, and it expects substantial growth in creative industry occupations too, although it sensibly warns that predictions this far ahead contain plenty of uncertainty.
Some of those jobs have names that would have meant nothing to a typical graduate’s parents 20 years ago: social media manager, content designer, user researcher, UX designer, SEO specialist, customer success manager, creator partnerships executive, community manager, podcast producer, video editor, e-commerce executive. There are also sales development and business development jobs – both among the few entry-level occupations currently growing in the LinkedIn data. Many care less about the title of your degree, or even whether you’ve got one, than whether you can show that you can write, organise, sell, understand customers, analyse information, make something or learn fast.
More and more, people are making their own jobs and creating their own opportunities because they have to. Could your progeny run a business's social media accounts, edit video, start a newsletter, build a website, make a podcast, or begin a YouTube channel about something they know? The channel may never pay the rent, but they might gain evidence that they can script, film, edit, and publish, understand an audience, and keep producing work without somebody standing over them.
I would also encourage them to meet people, because sending applications through portals is only one way into work and it is a dispiriting one when hundreds of other people are doing the same thing. Some of their mates might know more people than they do. Go to parties with them. And when they do meet people, it’s not so much “can you get me a job?”. It’s more: “How did you get into what you do?” and “Who else should I talk to?”
And at home, I try to remember that their careers will probably start in a way we don't recognise. It may look like three days in a cafe, two freelance clients and a project on YouTube; then one client recommends them, somebody introduces them to somebody else, another bit of work appears, and a year later the route looks far more coherent in retrospect than it did while they were living it. Parents tend to want the first rung of the ladder to be a recognisable step, to reassure us, but children may have to build part of the ladder themselves.
Replace “have you got a job yet?” with questions that leave them some room. “Who have you met? What are you finding out?” You cannot remove the uncertainty from this stage of their life, but you can avoid turning your anxiety into their second job.
Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist, writer and broadcaster and is the Nerve’s cultural agony aunt. Her Ask Philippa advice column is on Substack, and her debut novel – Shrink Solves Murder, published by Hutchinson Heinemann – is out now