(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lim Hwa-seop = The story of a job seeker who received a doctorate in chemical engineering from the prestigious Princeton University in 2024 and was still unemployed despite applying to more than 2,300 places over two years was introduced in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
On the 17th (local time), WSJ introduced the case of Dr. Jack Weiss (30), who is from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, and lives with his parents at home in his hometown.
He graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and entered the doctoral program at Princeton University in 2018, studying chemical principles and intermolecular interactions.
His research on ice formation was cited by the Nobel Committee as an example of the scientific use of machine learning when announcing the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.
At first, Dr. Weiss sent out numerous applications for a research position at a pharmaceutical company or a prestigious postdoctoral researcher position at a national research institute, but most of the time he received no response and only occasionally received notification of rejection.
He expanded his application scope regardless of industry or region, but often did not even get an opportunity for an interview. He later applied for a food cooking and preparation job at a company selling frozen crab cakes, but received no call at all.
I tried to contact alumni from Princeton University and Rice University by phone to see if my academic connections would be of help, but in the end, sometimes the only help I received was to "look at the company's recruiting website again."
In January of this year, he worked part-time for $70 (93,000 won) per hour at a startup that hires experts to train artificial intelligence (AI).
At first, there were times I worked 20 hours a week and other times I only worked 4 hours, but as the days without work increased, I stopped working for several weeks, and eventually I found out that my contract was ending through a group message in mid-March.
Dr. Weiss is considering going to law school and has decided to take the entrance exam in November, and is also trying to start a business by designing a drone to remove invasive weeds using AI.
He said, “If you really believe you have value, you have to step up and make that value a reality.”
Dr. Weiss's parents, a doctor couple, are still shocked by the reality that their son is having difficulty finding a job.
His mother, Holly Carvers, said she looked through her son's application to see if there were any issues that might have put employers off, but nothing stood out and the application seemed well written. "It's really unexpected. I don't know what to make of this situation," she said.
“I never dreamed this kid would have any trouble,” said his father, John Weiss.
Reporter Lindsey Ellis, who wrote the article, said that when she first interviewed Dr. Weiss at the end of last year, just before his 30th birthday, she explained, "We tried to meet job seekers in all 50 states."
“After interviewing dozens of people across all 50 states, Weiss’s story particularly stuck with me because his story reflected the extreme cold spell that has paralyzed the labor market over the past few years,” he wrote.
He explained that the current situation in the U.S. job market is what economists call a 'low hiring, low firing' environment. "Many people have jobs, but they do not leave those jobs, limiting opportunities for others. People without jobs feel like they have been driven out of the fortress, and are unable to enter the growing economy."
According to WSJ, the latest U.S. employment report fell far short of market expectations.
Although the unemployment rate is still low, the proportion of those unemployed for more than 27 weeks among the unemployed this summer was the highest in over 10 years, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic and immediately after.
In an August Gallup poll, only 34% of Americans said that now is a “good time to find a decent job.”
In a Pew Research Center survey released last month, more than 70% of U.S. respondents expected overall jobs to decrease due to AI.
