It’s graduation season, and the overflowing joy of my friends and family with children earning high school diplomas and undergraduate and graduate degrees is being displayed on social media feeds and reels. Since I’ve been out of college for a while now, seeing my peers celebrating their kids’ milestone accomplishments is a remarkable full-circle moment to witness. Their prayers to God, labor of love and tremendous sacrifices have come to fruition.

The country’s landscape in 2025 is similar to the one my college classmates and I faced in the early 1990s. Gen X college graduates, like the newly minted Gen Z grads this year, were skeptical about potential employment and the economy, as we “(faced) the bleakest job market in a decade or more,” according to a New York Times report in 1991. We were marching into a recession with mass layoffs resulting in the loss of over 1 million jobs, which the Times called “(the erosion of) the market value of higher education.” There was fiercer competition for entry-level positions, and many Gen X grads were disappointed that their career paths would be harder than expected. After all, most of our generation was told that a college degree was the ticket to a prosperous future. Yet the students interviewed in the Times expressed some of the same concerns that the college class of 2025 currently has. A Princeton history graduate shared that he did not receive any offers of employment from the 42 international corporations he applied to, despite being fluent in three languages. English and journalism majors were discouraged due to the flood of rejection letters from their job searches. Some significant questions were raised in this article that are still being debated: What is the worth of a college degree, and how can you measure a good return on tuition investment? Of course, this answer varies depending on the demand for specific fields. An English major today, just like Gen X humanities graduates three decades ago, will have to chart a detailed career trajectory, probably requiring graduate school. Gen Z grads with STEM degrees most likely will not struggle as much landing a job, as positions in data science and biomedical and chemical engineering are in high demand.

Looking at the current Gen Z grad outlook, an Inside Higher Ed Student Voice survey of 703 college seniors found that 68% are worried about their futures. Data from a Handshake survey reiterated these findings, with two-thirds of a 1,925 Gen Z sample size stating that they are not confident about their job prospects. Other issues causing them anxiety are student loans (54%), our polarizing politics (45%) and the upsurge of generative artificial intelligence (45%). My generation had student debt burdens, but politics were definitely more civil in the ’90s, and the significant technological advancement we faced was the internet becoming available in the public domain by 1993.

Like the generations before them, Gen Z will learn to be resilient in a world that can be very scary at times, and many may have to pivot earlier in their careers. As I think about what my college friends and I have learned since our undergraduate days, many of us now intently focus on how our God-given gifts are displayed through our work, particularly how we are deployed for a divine assignment in addition to helping our professional organizations thrive. The late Dr. Myles Munroe, a Bahamian evangelist and bestselling author, often spoke on the gifts that God imparts to every one of us, emphasizing that these precious talents and abilities are unique to our calling in making the world a better place. Munroe stressed that tapping into our spiritual gifts would push us toward God’s true purpose for our lives, whether that be what we went to college for or a pathway to something bigger than we ever imagined. This viewpoint is transformative in terms of how a career is regarded, which I believe many Gen Z grads will discover. As they mature, they will learn that doors will miraculously open when they begin to chase their destiny along with their dreams.