There you sit, at your desk, in front of your laptop, scrolling and scrolling. Your back is aching, hands are cramping and eyes are awfully bloodshot. Your eyes are actually burning, like a lot, the light from the computer screen is surely melting your retinas at this point.

More scrolling…

After about six hours, maybe even seven hours, pass of job hunting, it is clear to you; you definitely need to take a break before you die. Because at this point, your posture is so hunched over you will need over a year’s worth of Physical Therapy to correct it, and you are positive that the radiation off of the monitor is making you hallucinate, or something.

But you keep scrolling through that GlassDoor or Indeed job search with your hopes only sort of high now. Until it finally happens…

You have actually found a job description that matches every criterion you have been looking for. It checks all of your boxes; location, salary, correct major and degree, and career path.

“Can this be happening,” you think to yourself, “have I finally found THE job?”

You are a perfect fit, it is in your field of expertise, words cannot describe your hopeful feeling. You keep on reading the description until you hit THE line, the sentence that crushes your hopes and dreams, even some of your soul too.

“5-6 years work experience required”

Scrolling…

We have all been there, and are still there, maybe we will be there forever. We all ask the question of ‘how?’ How is a senior in college, a college undergraduate, or even Master’s graduate supposed to acquire such an absurd amount of job experience like that?

At a young age, we start out our work experience level bars by doing odd and end jobs, such as, mowing the neighbors’ lawns or babysitting friends’ kids. Then as we level up on the game of life, if one is lucky enough, we can get some customer or retail experience as a teen and throughout college. We never get that career-specific, managerial, or whatever work experience that lasts 3 plus years which everyone and a half seems to be looking for in a twenty-something-year-old.

By the end of college, you need to get an internship within your field or major to graduate. Think of it as a baby step towards your goals. They make this a requirement to give you some ‘real-life experience,' because we all know that one semester is definitely going to give you enough work experience to start your career. Let me tell you now, it most definitely will not.

So here we are, stuck in some vicious ‘7th circle of hell’ cycle that we feel we will never escape. It honestly sounds like this,“I need a job. But to get a job I need job experience. And to get job experience, I need a job…” and so on and so forth.

During the first week of this November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published their monthly summary of the “Employment Situation” for the month of October 2017. This publication is part of their Economic News Releases, and it gathers data on employment/unemployment rates of the United States populous.

In this release, and it's corresponding charts, 2% of 25-year-olds and above, who hold a Bachelors degree or higher, are unemployed, and 3.7% of 25+-year-olds with some college or Associate degrees are unemployed. On top of this, 13.7% of U.S teens do not have a job.

An economic research article, (sourced by the BLS) posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Labor Market for Recent College Graduates shows an underemployment rate of 34.4% in college grads.

Underemployment means a college graduate who is working in a job that does not require a degree. With that said, there is approximately 1 out of every 3 college grads stuck in a job that did not necessarily need them to go to college for a degree in the first place.

However, those 1/3 grads might have figured it out; the way to escape the cycle.

While the job they are currently in may not have much to do with their major or even needed them to get that degree, they are on the road to victory. They are getting that gosh darn work experience everyone is looking for, one a way or another.

Not to mention the other two-thirds of that population. The ones with a job, in their field, corresponding with their major. And, probably, in a location they have been looking for.

They’ve just got it all under control.