In less than two weeks, fourth-year University of Iowa student Grace Corcoran will go from being a Hawkeye to an alumnus. After four years at the university and holding multiple jobs and volunteer positions, she is excited about the new possibilities and change that graduation can bring.

However, that change, and the subsequent job search that comes with it, has been a point of anxiety for the student double majoring in finance and business analytics and information systems. Despite having experience in her field, Corcoran is having trouble hearing back from hiring managers and getting a job offer post-graduation.

“I feel like graduation is coming up in two weeks, and people keep asking me where I’m going to be and what my plans are, and my answer is always, I would like to know as well,” Corcoran said. “It’s kind of stressful not knowing where I’m going to be in the next couple months. I’d like to have a plan, but just trying to take it day by day.”

Corcoran has an accounting assistant internship at a private equity firm under her belt, along with other jobs as a student at the UI. She can go back to her home of Puerto Rico and the firm if necessary, but it is not exactly what she wants to do because her interests are not in accounting.

“I thought the fact that I had that internship and performed so well that it turned into a part-time remote job would help me obtain other jobs, but I am finding that’s not the case,” she said.

The job application process has been frustrating, Corcoran said. She has found herself applying to nearly 80 jobs in the last six months, with various results in communication.

“I’ve had some where I just don’t even hear back. I have a couple where I do hear back, but it’s like five months later,” Corcoran said. “I think all businesses and all application systems are just so kind of backlogged with the hiring freezes in the mass amount of applicants this year.”

Companies across the U.S. are opting to pause hiring for positions as a result of President Donald Trump’s trade war and enforcement of tariffs on other countries. These political movements have added another layer of difficulty and uncertainty to the process, Corcoran said.

“I think stress is a common theme amongst all my friends when I talk about finding a job and their post-grad plan,” Corcoran said. “I know it’s usually a stressful process, but I think the current political and economic state of the United States right now is kind of hurting the process a lot due to so many financial institutions and other big businesses being on hiring freezes, the results to the economic uncertainty that’s taken place.”

Corcoran is not only hearing the uncertainty about the job market from her friends. She has also recently heard experts speak about the implications of the hiring freeze on television, including Bloomberg’s morning brief segment.

“One of the chief economists from the big banks was just kind of like, yeah, it’s just bad luck if you’re a 22-year-old university graduate looking for work, [it’s] very difficult right now with all the hiring freezes,” Corcoran said. “I think it’s definitely a nationwide issue for graduates.”

While the state of the economy is concerning to many, it has not yet entered a detrimental period. The U.S. is not in a recession, which would be a real cause for concern, said UI Professor of Economics Anne Villamil.

A recession happens when there is a major shock to the economy, like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 recession caused by a global financial crisis, or the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.

For Carla Keppler LaPorta, a 2009 UI graduate who majored in journalism and mass communication and communication studies, graduating into a recession was a nerve-wracking experience that was made more intense by the economic state of the U.S.

“I think looking back, it was a combination of excitement to enter the ‘real world’ and some nerves about securing a job and the right job immediately after graduation,” Keppler LaPorta said. “No doubt there’s a certain level of pressure you feel as you’re starting to count down the days until you get your diploma. It’s just part of it.”

While Keppler LaPorta was able to secure an internship following her graduation from the UI, there was still an air of uncertainty surrounding her graduating class.

“Said simply, it was pretty gloomy,” Keppler LaPorta said. “We were in the middle of the recession, and with that, of course, comes high unemployment, historically high, I believe, at that time, so not an ideal situation for someone just hitting the job market. I also had an internship my senior year at Iowa, where I saw several tenured staff members face layoffs, and that was a tough thing to watch as someone just looking for a job themselves.”

Keppler LaPorta added it was not unusual for her peers to immediately find roles in their area of interest and that the job search came with a learning curve for many people.

“I saw a lot of my friends at this time having to take part-time roles until they were able to find something in the field they study, or some started down a different track and just kind of headed in a different direction than they originally planned. But I think in the end, we all kind of landed in a good place and moved forward,” she said.

The period, as stressful as it was, was also an opportunity for Keppler LaPorta and her peers to learn how to navigate a difficult situation. For some, it meant working a little harder or getting a little bit more creative in the job search, and for others, it meant taking a few extra steps or shifting and shuffling before landing something, she said.

The uncertainty allowed Keppler LaPorta and her fellow students to try different jobs and roles while also adjusting to postgraduate life. No matter the state of the economy, the likelihood that you are going to have to navigate multiple jobs and different experiences after graduating is high, she said, especially after a temporary job like an internship, you are hoping to turn into an offer.

“It’s kind of like an initial wave, and then the potential for doing it again. But, you know, I think it’s the job search. You’ll probably do it, maybe again at another point in your career. So it’s just kind of part of it.” Keppler LaPorta said. “That’s always the hope, right, that you can land something and get in there full time.”

Keppler LaPorta’s experience is unlikely to mirror the experience of 2025 graduates, Vilamill said. Currently, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is low, but there is softness in the economy itself, and the potential for a self-induced recession from the trade war is there.

“I think the real issue is the policy uncertainty, because what you want is a stable macroeconomic environment, and when you have policies that are continually changing, that makes it difficult,” Villamil said. “The trade war…is right now just characterized by massive uncertainty.”

The uncertainty around foreign and trade policies is causing firms to delay investments, she said. This impacts the costs that companies are facing, leading them to potentially lower or delay some of their hiring plans or instead offer short-term contracts until that uncertainty is resolved.

“Certainly, if you don’t know the policy rules as a firm, you’re not going to want to make large capital expenditures,” Villamil said. “The Trump administration says it wants more investment in the U.S. economy, and that certainly is a good thing, but investment is a long-term phenomenon.”

Because of this, more companies might hesitate to make an offer to a potential candidate. Instead, some may opt to offer a potential start date as opposed to a hard start date that the employee can depend on.

“There’s enough uncertainty in the economy, particularly since people are concerned about a Trump tariff recession, that firms aren’t saying, ‘here’s a contract, and the starting date is January 2, 2026,’ it’s, ‘this is a target date,’” Villamil said. “So there’s uncertainty for everybody, the firm, the potential employee.”

Additionally, the nature of the trade war has made it hard to know what to expect financially.

“Most economists have said, very openly, ‘don’t do this, this is very destructive. It destroys GDP and it destroys wealth. Don’t do this’ and if you’re destroying global GDP, eventually jobs will follow,” Villamil said. “The hope is that the President is maybe getting the message that a trade war is not a good policy, and because this is ongoing, it is very difficult to predict what is going to happen.”

The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is a measure of a country’s economic activity. According to a April 30 report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent over January, February, and March. The GDP had previously increased by 2.4 percent.

The key to stabilizing and unfreezing the job market will be the trade negotiations between the U.S. and the countries that have tariffs implemented against them, she said.

“We’ve got to get to those negotiations to create a more a more stable global trading environment, which will feed back to us jobs,” Villamil said.

While it is still an extremely tense time, Corcoran is comforted because she is not the only student experiencing the uncertainty of a job search.

“It is a little bit reassuring that when I talk to a couple of my friends or other students in Tippie that they’re going through the same struggles,” Corcoran said. “It’s not just the isolated issue with me, which kind of provides some support and encouragement, but it definitely is a very stressful and anxiety-inducing situation.”

One of these fellow students is Luke Loving, a fourth-year student at the UI majoring in marketing with minors in psychology and media management. Loving also has previous experience going into the post-graduate search as a content marketing intern, but the company was unable to offer him a full-time position.

“They basically said they would love to have me, that they love having me as a worker, but they don’t know if they could hire me full-time after graduating because sales have been down recently, so now I’m not sure,” Loving said. “I’m kind of just assuming I’m not going to have that job, so I’ve just been really ramping up my search and applying to jobs, but I haven’t really heard anything since.”

Loving’s experience is similar to Corcoran’s. He has experienced either no responses to job applications or a long wait before hearing back. While he said he has not applied to a lot of jobs, that is because he is being specific with the places he chooses to apply.

“It’s kind of late, so finding somewhere to live if I were to go work in person in the summer would be difficult now,” Loving said. “I’m looking for completely remote jobs, or just jobs that are close to my hometown of Davenport. I probably have been applying as much as I should have been, should be, but I’m still applying to enough.”

While Loving was initially looking exclusively for full-time positions, he is now considering any job possibilities that he sees.

“I think what I’m really looking for is, if it’s an internship, I want disclosure that there’s opportunity for a full-time role after if I perform well enough, or if they like what I’m doing,” Loving said. “That’s kind of what I’m looking for now, is an internship with opportunity to become full-time or just a full-time role.”

While Loving said he is not worried about getting a job due to the strength of his resume and networking skills, the process is still slightly disheartening.

“It is a little sad, because as a college student, I know how much time people spend getting their degree and all the money that has to be spent,” Loving said. “It’s just kind of disappointing when you have to find a job that your degree is not even in, like a job that any kid with a high school diploma could get, after you graduate, because you can’t find a job that correlates with your degree.”