Career Anxiety Statistics: How Many Students are Stressed Over Job Prospects in 2025

AI in Education

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Career Anxiety Statistics: How Many Students are Stressed Over Job Prospects in 2025

Students’ сareer anxiety: 2025 job market, trends and tendencies to look for.

Written by

Kateryna B.

Published on

Jun 26, 2025

Table of contents

Student Concerns: The Numbers Behind the Anxiety
The Complex Ecosystem of Factors for Career Anxiety
Consequences of Career Anxiety
Sum Up

Table of contents

Student Concerns: The Numbers Behind the Anxiety
The Complex Ecosystem of Factors for Career Anxiety
Consequences of Career Anxiety
Sum Up

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“If the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need upskilling and reskilling training by 2030” - according to the Future of Jobs 2025 Report from World Economic Forum.

In such a reality, currently graduating students feel anxious about their career prospects in the current market, let alone the need to retrain again in a few years.

The problem is, that according to the study, a higher level of career worries strongly leads to lower confidence in making career decisions.

So, how are students managing anxiety issues? Is there any helpful support in job searching or educational institutions to overcome anxiety? Feeling career anxiety as a part of other mental health issues without healthy coping strategies and healthy habits is tough.

This article is an explanation of statistical analysis for career anxiety and uncertainty trends, conducted on the data from the World Economic Forum and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Student Concerns: The Numbers Behind the Anxiety

According to the 2023-2024 Healthy Mind Network study, 34% of students have moderate to severe anxious feelings.

So, what makes one out of three students feel lost and experience anxious thoughts?

In 2018, a research by Australian Educational Services showed that from 29% to 40% of students experience anxiety and some sort of career uncertainty. In particular, out of 2,800 Australian secondary school students,

33% worry that they do not know what career suits them better.
40.5% reported that they had no career direction
41.5% shared worries about their studies not leading to a “real” career
29% often felt down or worried about selecting a career
34.3% worried about not being employable upon graduation

According to the OECD's 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), two in five students at age 15 across OECD countries have no clear career plans.

Even more concerning, this proportion of students experiencing career uncertainty has grown by more than half since 2018. The data indicates that the trends with career uncertainty are not regular market fluctuations but global shifts affecting a few whole generations.

Here is some more concerning statistical data and first-person intros from OECD’s report to explain what exact concerns stand behind the trends:

49% agree that “School has done little to prepare me for adult life when I leave school”.
47% agree that “I worry that I am not prepared for life after” [the final year of compulsory education].
42% disagree that “School has helped give me confidence to make decisions”.
34% disagree that “I feel well-informed about possible paths for me after”.

If you recognize the feelings, you may want to read an article about strategic short-term and long-term career goals. Learning to manage anxiety effectively is crucial for making career decisions during uncertain economic times.

The Complex Ecosystem of Factors for Career Anxiety

But why do students experience such prominent struggles with choosing a career in the modern open-boards world? The reasons for complicated education-to-job market transition include macro and micro economic, labor market, institutional, and social factors.

Macro Factors Setting the Background for Student Anxiety

According to the Future of Jobs 2025 report, the most prominent macroeconomics and social reasons for job market changes are:

Aging and declining working age populations
Expanding working age populations
Increasing costs of living
General economic shutdown
Inflation
Geopolitical conflicts
Climate emergencies
Technological expansion and job replacement

These factors shape the overall job market background for Gen Z and younger Millennials, the generations now transitioning from education to employment. According to 2024 OECD indicators, “33% of 18-24 year-olds are in education and inactive in the labour market, while 19% combine their studies with employment”.

Macro Trends Impact on Students

Macro social and economic trends have severe negative impacts on the majority of student body, including:

Family support burdens. Students feel anxiety over becoming the main economic backbone for the aging families. They feel stuck in family dynamics and try to gain control by entering their first job early.

Greater competition for entry-level jobs. AI development and general economic struggles mean fierce competition for the current job market.

Fear of underemployment. Having degrees no longer ensures good employment or new career choices. New tasks from managers in the work environment may not correlate with the ability to gain good grades.

Greater need for financial stability. Tuition fees, rent, and basic living costs are rising faster than financial aid or part-time wages can cover the costs of studying and living.

Chronic stress. During studies, students take part-time jobs, loans, or postpone graduation due to inability to cope with the overwhelming world.

Anxiety about the chosen career path. Students relieve stress about career choices by picking “safe” or “high-paying” fields.

These collective burdens weigh upon students, adding to the natural struggles of reaching adolescence. In more stable circumstances, graduating students would only worry about natural life phase transitional struggles. However, now they have to face the global crises while also managing the job market challenges.

So what specific job market are they entering, given tight general social and economic conditions?

Job Creation and Destruction Macro Rates Predictions

Macro trends are affecting the whole market, in particular expanding or shrinking the available job pools for students.

According to the Future of Jobs Survey, the trend for future employment is positive - there is an expected +7% net growth in employment, which is about 78 million more jobs overall. The data breakdown shows that:

14% of today’s jobs will be newly created (≈170 million new jobs globally)
8% of today’s jobs will be displaced (≈92 million jobs lost)
As a result, the trend is cautiously positive.

A net increase of 7% suggests more jobs will be created than destroyed in the next decade if current trends hold and the right skills are in place.

Job Market Transformation (2025-2030)	Impact
New jobs created	170 million (14% of current employment)
Jobs displaced	92 million (8% of current employment)
Net job growth	78 million (7% of current employment)
Total jobs affected by transformation	22% of current employment

Table 1: Job market volume predictions for students in 2025-2039

But Will Graduating Students Have Skills for Newly Emerging Roles?

Although the market is rather overall growing than shrinking, the students still have valid reasons to experience career anxiety.

Average graduate students face high-demanding skill requirements just to enter the workforce. According to the Future of Jobs 2025 report, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period.

The report also lists the most valuable skills currently expected in the market:

Network and cybersecurity skills. The AI trends are driving the demand for security-related jobs, consequently increasing the demand for technical security-based skills.

Human-centered skills. The market expects juniors and trainees to express resilience, flexibility, agility skills, leadership, interpersonal relationships, time management skills, and social influence.

Analytical thinking. Seven out of 10 companies are considering analytical thinking as essential for employment in 2025.

Generative AI training. While technology creates opportunities, it also generates anxiety. 60% of employers expect broadening digital access to transform their business by 2030, while 86% expect AI and information processing advancements to be transformative.

The problem with developing correct skillsets, though, is that students:

Either fail to find jobs relevant to their study programmes past graduation
Cannot find relevant work experience and technical skills while studying
Experience a financial pressure to work in jobs unrelated to their studies

In most cases, the education-workhorse link is still extremely important, as individuals without an upper secondary education earn about 18% less than those who complete this level of schooling, according to the OECD report.

Does the Education System Add to Student Career Anxiety?

The three main problems with educational institutions that lead to poor career management for students are poor curriculum relevance, insufficient career guidance, and focus on credentials over competencies.

As mentioned above, 49% of students agree that "School has done little to prepare me for adult life when I leave school", according to an OECD report.

The responsibility for the career uncertainty lies on both parties, though. PISA research across multiple countries shows that career development interactions are effective, specifically indicating that:

32% of students who had not engaged in a career conversation expressed occupational uncertainty;
And only 19% of their peers who had spoken to someone about a job of interest reported the same fears.

Education-career correlations for students

The report states that the major problem is not the unavailability of opportunities for students to spark about their career prospects but a lack of student engagement in such talks.

Gender Patterns in Career Uncertainty

Interestingly, the data shows that boys are more likely to experience career uncertainty than girls (41% vs. 36%).

This 5-percentage-point difference challenges common assumptions and suggests that young men may be particularly struggling to envision their professional lives.

Societal and Cultural Pressures: The Hidden Burden

Apart from dealing with complicated job market circumstances, students also face many internal conflicts coming from social media, peer, and family pressure.

This external pressure manifests in tangible ways:

Students feel that their career options are restrained by personal characteristics and feel the pressure of the expectations, including parents and teachers - OECD report.
Students feel social media pressure, 59% of them feeling down or worried about career selection in the overachievement culture - OECD report.

The findings suggest that career anxiety isn't just about job market conditions. It is also deeply impacted by the social narratives around employment and success.

Consequences of Career Anxiety

The consequences of anxiety impact multiple essential areas of the student's personal life, physical health, and job performance. Even the completely normal worries may develop into full-fledged anxiety disorders with time.

In particular, career anxiety:

Undermines academic performance. Students experiencing career anxiety symptoms are more likely to be low academic performers, with 44% of low performers feeling anxious in the long run, compared to just 34% of high performers - data finds.

Reduces long-term employment rates. Students who feel anxious about their career prospects while studying will take more time and hard work to figure out their path later in life. They are also at risk of frequently changing jobs, missing out on personal goals, compared to co workers, and complications dealing with heavy workloads.

Impairs subjective well-being. There is a significant correlation between career anxiety in college and lower levels of subjective wellbeing. Students may feel stuck within their current roles or feel trapped by external conditions.

With tertiary education providing a 56% earnings advantage over upper secondary education, and this gap widening with age (from 39% at ages 25-34 to 68% at ages 45-54), career anxiety is an important factor to consider socially.

The consequences of career anxiety on students' mental health is not a personal issue but a collective one.

Sum Up

The statistics paint a clear picture: career anxiety among students isn't a personal failing or temporary phase. Instead, it is a rational response to unprecedented global transformation.

With 40% of students lacking clear career plans, 22% of all jobs facing creation or destruction by 2030, and 39% of current skills becoming obsolete, the market only becomes more competitive.

Students feel anxious for legitimate reasons: lack of job security, professional support, unclear career trajectory, and constant self-doubt. The career anxiety is real, validated by hard numbers. But the data also reveals solutions:

Students who engage in career conversations reduce their uncertainty from 32% to just 19%.
Those who combine work with studies achieve better employment outcomes.
The job market, while transformative, is growing—creating 78 million net new positions by 2030.
The key lies not in eliminating uncertainty but in developing the analytical thinking, resilience, and adaptability that 70% of employers now consider essential.

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Frequently asked questions

Recognise that your well-being and personal life matter just as much as your professional goals. Try breathing exercises to reduce stress and regain the sense of control. Search for a workplace or team that aligns with your goals and your current ability to meet job requirements.

Yes, it’s completely normal to feel anxious about your future job, especially for college students and young professionals entering a changing job market. The fear of uncertainty can feel overwhelming when paired with the pressure to achieve success and make the right life choices.

If you’re feeling anxious about choosing the wrong career, try to reframe the decision as one part of a longer journey rather than a life sentence.

Sources:

The Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum. (n.d.). https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
OECD. (n.d.). Education at a glance 2024 | OECD. OECD Indicators - Education at a Glance 2024. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-at-a-glance-2024_c00cad36-en.html
Directorate for Education and Skills. (n.d.). Teenage career uncertainty (EN). OECD Education Spotlights. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2024/09/teenage-career-uncertainty_63c29ae4/e89c3da9-en.pdf
Education Services Australia. (n.d.). Managing career uncertainty and anxiety: The power of career interventions https://myfuture.edu.au/docs/default-source/insights/Managing-career-anxiety-the-power-of-career-conversations.pdf

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