"Why Is This Happening to Our Son?" Parents Baffled as Princeton Ph.D. Fails to Find a Job Despite 2,300 Applications

Princeton Ph.D. Still Jobless After Applying to 2,300 Places
Hiring and Layoffs Both Decline... U.S. Job Market Freezes

A job seeker who earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from the prestigious Princeton University in 2024 reportedly applied to more than 2,300 places over more than two years but still has not found a job.

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Princeton Engineering Ph.D. Unemployed for Two Years Despite 2,300 Applications; Physician Parents Shocked

On October 17 (local time), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) shared the story of Jack Weiss, 30, from Salt Lake City, Utah.

After graduating summa cum laude from Rice University, he entered Princeton University's doctoral program in 2018, where he studied chemical principles and interactions between molecules. The Nobel Committee cited his research on ice formation as an example of the scientific application of machine learning when it announced the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Dr. Weiss initially sent out numerous applications for research positions at pharmaceutical companies and postdoctoral positions working with prominent researchers at national laboratories. However, he received no response from most employers and only occasional rejection notices.

He applied for jobs across industries and regions, but often did not even get an interview. Later, he also applied for food preparation work at a company that sells frozen crab cakes, but never heard back.

Hoping his alumni connections might help, he called alumni from Princeton and Rice to ask for assistance. However, the responses often amounted to little more than suggestions to check the job sites again.

In January this year, he also worked part-time for $70 an hour (93,000 won) at a startup that hires experts to train artificial intelligence (AI). At first, he sometimes worked 20 hours a week, but there were also weeks when he worked only four hours. Then, as the work dwindled, he went several weeks without receiving any assignments. In mid-March, he learned his contract had ended through a message posted in a group chat.

Dr. Weiss is also considering law school. He has decided to take the entrance exam this November and is also trying his hand at entrepreneurship by designing drones that use AI to remove invasive weeds.

Dr. Weiss's parents, both physicians, were shocked by their son's difficulty finding a job. His mother, Holly Carvers, reviewed his applications to see if there was anything that might make employers hesitate, but said she could not find any particular problems. "This is really unexpected. I don't know how to make sense of it," she said. His father, John Weiss, also said, "I never imagined he would struggle."

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Low Hiring and Low Layoffs Persist, Shrinking Job Opportunities for Job Seekers

The WSJ analyzed that the "low-hiring, low-layoff" trend, in which both new hiring and layoffs remain limited, is making it harder for job seekers to enter the labor market. In other words, job opportunities are not increasing even when unemployment is low and the economy is growing.

According to the WSJ, the latest U.S. jobs report fell far short of market expectations. Although the unemployment rate remains low, this summer the share of unemployed people who had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer was the highest in more than a decade, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic and the period immediately afterward.

In a Gallup poll conducted in August, only 34% of Americans said it was a "good time to find a decent job." In a Pew Research Center survey released in September, more than 70% of U.S. respondents said they expected AI to reduce the total number of jobs.

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