If there’s one place in which Covid has best exposed the iniquities of the neoliberal system, it’s Britain’s universities. Throughout the pandemic, accommodation providers have been allowed to exploit students for cash, and newspapers have scapegoated students for rising infection rates after they were instructed to return to university by the country’s leaders; management, meanwhile, have used the pandemic as cover to worsen pay and conditions for university staff or effect lay-offs.

These problems have now proceeded into the lives of graduates. February 2021 saw the House of Commons publish two research briefings – one on the impact of Covid on the labour market, and one on youth unemployment statistics. Both reports attested to a situation with which both current students and recent graduates are extremely familiar.

The briefings revealed that for those aged 16-24, there has been a widespread shift from employment ‘to unemployment and inactivity’ since the start of the pandemic. Between January-March 2020 and September-November 2020, there has been an increase in unemployment of 66,000, and an increase in the youth unemployment rate from 12.1 percent to 14.4 percent. By the winter of 2020, 89,000 people aged 16-24 had been unemployed for over 12 months. The numbers are grim, and help to explain and politicise the experience of so many graduates this year – writing endless job applications that usually go unanswered.

The problem is one of a saturated market as much as a dearth of opportunities. The level of redundancies in September-November 2020 reached 395,000—’the highest in any quarter since records began in 1995’—which means graduates are not only competing with other graduates, some who have been job searching since the previous academic year; they’re also competing with candidates with far more experience. Those latter candidates are also victim to a barren job market which leaves them overqualified and often underpaid, while making nominally ‘entry-level’ jobs inaccessible.

Students like me, who are months away from graduating, are already being met with numerous rejections and told to prepare for many more. As a result, final-year students have spent the past academic year not only struggling to complete degrees without in-person learning, but also trying to accumulate as much extracurricular experience as possible from a remote setting. I intended to spend this academic year on a placement, but the pandemic made that impossible.

Eren, a Politics and History student, shares my anxieties. She’s found herself sometimes receiving three rejections a day. ‘It’s almost impossible not to lose hope,’ she says. ‘How do I stand out when everyone else is in the exact same position as me? I have absolutely no idea what life after uni will look like.’

Often when graduates complain of an empty job market, they’re encouraged to ‘diversify their CV’. The hard work and time that goes into study is mitigated by the fact that a degree increasingly isn’t enough: volunteering or internships are said to be vital to increase your prospects. The onus, above all, is on graduates to improve their own chances; the problem is made out to be an individual one.

Experience makes clear that this is not the case. Taneshia, who has an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Spanish and a master’s in Marketing Communications and Advertising, alongside an abundance of external experience, is still struggling to secure a graduate position.

‘I’ve exhausted all the tips,’ she says wearily, adding that she has no choice other than to ‘keep pushing.’

Almost a year on from graduating, luck hasn’t changed for the Class of 2020 either. Jhoemar, an accounting graduate, says that the congested market around his hometown means he’s now applying wherever positions crop up. More and more graduates are heading to metropolitan centres like London, where the likelihood of getting a position is higher, in a cycle of wealth-concentration that compounds deprivation and joblessness back home – and that it will take substantial political efforts to undo. Jhoemar is one of many students that are taking a break from submitting endless applications, overwhelmed by what he calls ‘such early hurdles’.

The upshot of all of this is that the ‘meritocracy’ is finally exposed as a façade. Young people have not suddenly decided to slack off: even beyond office-based graduate positions, those who would normally take on hospitality or retail work are also finding that there are simply no jobs. And despite the touting of Rishi Sunak’s Budget as a solution to the various crises people—both young and old—face, no solution to the constant state of limbo many of the former group find ourselves in was evident.

The extension of furlough and new business grants will help prevent some redundancies, and apprenticeship schemes will help bring others into work. But many young people who have spent the last three years getting the degree they were told was necessary, often alongside a part-time job, now find themselves with only a glowing CV and—at minimum—£27,000 of debt. The answer to this does not lie in captaining the football team, volunteering in a charity shop, or leaning French: it lies in substantial political and economic change.