Across the country, too many young people are doing everything right — working jobs, enrolling in training, and seeking advice — only to find themselves stuck. Despite their effort and ambition, the pathway to a stable, fulfilling adulthood has grown increasingly murky. New research from the Schultz Family Foundation and HarrisX puts a name to this disconnect: a broken marketplace. In this labor and education ecosystem, jobs go unfilled while talent goes underrecognized, and the traditional systems of guidance — school counselors, college degrees, even parental advice — no longer align with what the market demands. It’s a system that leaves too many behind — particularly young people from under-resourced communities, who are often navigating without a map.

To surface solutions and spark collaboration, SFF teamed up with NationSwell and LinkedIn on July 15 to convene some of the leading thinkers, practitioners, and changemakers exploring what it will take to fix this broken marketplace. The conversation spanned everything from the promise and pitfalls of AI, to the cultural overvaluation of four-year degrees, to the structural barriers facing youth who are working hard but treading water. While the dialogue surfaced powerful models and bright spots, it also revealed a shared hunger for something deeper: a reimagined system that meets young people where they are, honors their full potential, and builds pathways that are truly navigable, equitable, and aligned with the future of work.

Below are some of the most salient insights that surfaced during the discussion — and a few questions we’re still asking.

Fast Stats:

• 30 million young people in the U.S. are struggling, with roughly 15 million classified as underemployed or unemployed.
• Only 8% of high schoolers feel confident about their post-graduation plans.
• 86% of high school leaders say they recognize the importance of postsecondary planning — yet workforce readiness is still not meaningfully integrated into most school systems.
• While 71% of employers say there are enough opportunities for job seekers, only 43% of young adults agree
• Only 24% of parents claim to leverage school resources like guidance counselors and teachers.
• 73% of parents see their child as having direction or purpose on their own and not needing help.
• Only 35% of young adults report knowing exactly what drives them
• More than half of young adults say they do not believe that college offers the guarantee of a good job.

Insights:

• The labor market is experiencing a skills and credential mismatch. There’s a growing imbalance between the number of college-educated workers and the actual demand for degree-dependent roles. Simultaneously, there are increasing opportunities for non-degree workers — especially those with the right technical or vocational skills — which signals the need to reassess postsecondary education strategies.
  
• Millions of young people — especially women — currently feel unprepared to enter the current U.S. job market. Despite performing well academically in adolescence, a growing number of young women report feeling unready for the workforce as they approach adulthood. This decline in self-confidence appears to stem from a mix of systemic and social pressures: cultural expectations around caregiving, implicit biases in hiring, and a lack of tailored support for young mothers or women from low-income households.
  
• AI offers both promise and risk; it’s up to us to shape the outcomes. While artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize education, guidance, and workforce development, its impacts will depend entirely on how we design and deploy it. Leaders must proactively steer AI toward equitable and beneficial uses instead of passively responding to its disruptions.
  
• The jobs of the future will demand radically different skills. By 2030, 70% of the skills required for many jobs are projected to shift. This rapid evolution places tremendous pressure on workers, educators, and employers to anticipate change, reskill continuously, and adapt to a moving target.
  
• We must not leave vulnerable communities behind in the AI era. Historically marginalized populations — especially those without college degrees — face the greatest risk of being left out of the AI-driven economy. It’s critical to design tools, supports, and systems that center their needs from the start.
  
• There is a growing mismatch between college degrees and job outcomes. Despite a rise in college attainment, many recent graduates are struggling to find roles that match their education level, particularly as AI begins to automate white-collar tasks. This disconnect suggests a deeper misalignment in how we prepare people for the labor market.
  
• A surge in bachelor’s degrees hasn’t been matched by a surge in opportunity. The number of people earning college degrees has increased substantially, yet this hasn’t translated into better job placement or upward mobility for many graduates, hinting at a broken promise in the education-to-employment pipeline.
  
• People without degrees are outperforming expectations. Contrary to common narratives, employment rates among non-college-educated workers have improved in recent years. This trend challenges assumptions about where economic opportunity lies and signals a need to rethink credentialism.
  
• Career navigation must be reimagined for the AI era. Many young people are navigating a job market that no longer matches traditional pathways. They need updated guidance systems that reflect today’s labor market realities and help them develop adaptable, durable skills.
  
• Parents are desperate for modern tools and resources. Many parents feel unprepared to help their children thrive in today’s complex world. They are seeking updated, accessible resources that reflect current realities and equip them to support their kids in meaningful, future-ready ways.
  
• A place-based, community-driven parenting curriculum could be transformative. There’s an opportunity to create parenting supports that are deeply rooted in local needs, shaped by cross-sector collaboration, and tailored to the real conditions families face on the ground.
  
• Young people need proximity to possibility. Exposure to mentorship, networks, and real examples of success is critical. Youth are better able to envision and pursue meaningful futures when they can see what’s possible through trusted relationships and intergenerational support.
  
• Today’s guidance systems are woefully outdated. School counselors and other advisors are often overwhelmed, under-resourced, or operating from outdated assumptions. Young people need future-facing guidance tools that reflect the fast-changing world of work.
  
• AI could play a role in personalizing and scaling guidance. With the right design and data, AI has the potential to provide tailored, real-time guidance that meets each learner where they are — offering suggestions, pathways, and encouragement in a scalable way.
  
• The current job market is brutal for Gen Z. Some young people are submitting hundreds of AI-generated cover letters with little success, reflecting both the hyper-competitive nature of today’s labor market and a growing sense of disillusionment about career readiness. Simultaneously, AI-laden recruiting software imposes strict parameters on even the most qualified of candidates, filtering them out of the hiring pipeline unnecessarily.
  
• Employers are caught in a Catch-22 of their own making: they demand experience yet offer few pathways to get it. Many employers list “prior experience” as a prerequisite for entry-level roles, even as they shrink internship programs, reduce on-the-job training, and fail to create clear earn-and-learn pathways. This paradox disproportionately affects young people — especially those without access to well-networked mentors or unpaid work experience—who find themselves locked out of opportunity before they’ve even begun. The result is a self-perpetuating loop: a talent pool deemed “unprepared” not because of lack of potential, but because the system never gave them a chance to prove it.
  
• We need more bilingual talent fluent in both tech and impact. There’s a critical shortage of people who understand both advanced AI systems and the complex realities of the social sector. Building cross-functional, technically capable teams will be essential to making AI work for good.
  
• The most effective nonprofits will couple tech with deep human expertise. Organizations that integrate AI into their strategy while staying grounded in pedagogy, community trust, and lived experience will be best positioned to deliver meaningful outcomes.
  
• We need faster feedback loops between experience and evidence. Too often, it takes years to understand whether a policy or program has worked. Investing in data infrastructure and short-term proxies for long-term outcomes will help systems learn and improve more quickly.
  
• A better future requires both urgency and imagination. It’s not enough to simply react to AI; leaders must act urgently to reshape the system — and also imagine radically different, more inclusive possibilities. Otherwise, we risk reinforcing the same inequities under new technological wrappers.

Questions we’re still asking:

1. How can we build career navigation systems that truly reflect today’s labor market realities?

There’s a clear consensus that existing guidance systems (from high school counselors to college pathways) are outdated and disconnected from the fast-moving job market. But what would a truly modernized system look like? How can it be both data-informed and deeply human, scalable and personalized, responsive to local labor conditions but aligned with broader trends like AI disruption?

2. What’s the right role for AI in supporting young people’s transitions into adulthood?

AI came up repeatedly as both a tool of promise and a source of unease. How do we ensure it amplifies human insight rather than replacing it? Can it truly offer equitable guidance without deep community input in its design? And how do we build trust in AI tools among young people who already feel the system is stacked against them?

3. How do we rebalance the perceived value of college versus non-college pathways?

The traditional “college or bust” mindset is breaking down, but what comes next is still murky. What should replace the old hierarchy of credentials? How do we create a labor market and cultural narrative that values skilled trades, apprenticeships, and alternative pathways just as much as a bachelor’s degree?

4. What does it look like to design truly place-based solutions in a national context?

Participants voiced strong belief in localized, community-rooted solutions. But questions remain: How do we balance the nuance of place with the efficiency of national models? Can we scale what’s working locally without flattening what makes it powerful? And what infrastructure is needed to make place-based innovation replicable and sustainable?

5. How do we support young people who are “doing everything right” but still stuck?

A deeply felt tension emerged around the young people who are working hard, following guidance, and still not progressing. Why aren’t their efforts yielding returns? Is it a failure of systems, expectations, or opportunity design? What does justice look like for this group — and what kinds of interventions (navigational, relational, structural) will actually help them move forward?

6. How do we square the inherent tension between the power of industry and the power of the American education system?

Calling on employers and educators to rectify a broken system exposes an uncomfortable truth — businesses have the capital; educators do not. While both employers and the education system will need to make changes in order to better serve young job seekers, the pace of change is unlikely to be equal.

NationSwell’s Workforce Innovation Collaborative:

As SFF’s research reveals, the workforce landscape is shifting rapidly — shaped by AI, automation, shifting demographics, and economic uncertainty. The labor market in the next decade will face urgent challenges and opportunities across every sector and industry. Impact leaders need a trusted space to align on what’s next.

Launching in Fall 2025, NationSwell’s Workforce Innovation Collaborative is where cross-sector leaders come together to explore trends, surface bold practices, and co-design scalable solutions. Collaborative members join a peer-driven learning and action journey — building cross-sector relationships, surfacing bold solutions, and advancing shared impact through strategy, storytelling, and collective action. 

Join the collaborative to access curated research, insights, and expert-led workshops that will help you to stay ahead of workforce trends and technologies. Alongside a trusted cohort of senior leaders across sectors, participants will move from insight to action through targeted workstreams and strategic planning designed to unlock aligned, real-world progress. 

If you are interested in learning more, please get in touch.

From early childhood to early career, every life stage presents a critical window to shape opportunity, dignity, and outcomes. And yet, too often, interventions remain fragmented, siloed, or under-resourced—especially for those most impacted by structural inequities.

At a pivotal political moment, NationSwell convened a group of experienced leaders to connect on the community-rooted solutions, place-based approaches, public-private partnerships, and system-level strategies that are demonstrably delivering results for young people and families across the country.

Some of the insights that surfaced appear below:

Insights

Neutral, community-led backbones are essential to the work. Rather than imposing top-down directives, showing up as a non-threatening backbone convener of disparate groups, including school districts and local nonprofits, fosters a neutrality that helps avoid competition and power struggles that can derail collaborative work.

Start narrow and build momentum. Trying to address the full cradle-to-career continuum at once is often overwhelming and counterproductive. Instead, start with a specific issue — like early childhood, youth opportunity, or workforce entry — where there is both community will and a clear gap. Achieving visible progress in one area helps generate trust and alignment that can then be expanded to broader outcomes, and also allows for iterative learning and increased credibility with partners and funders.

Success hinges on more than education. While many cradle-to-career efforts focus on educational benchmarks, external factors like housing instability, transportation, healthcare, and access to social services all dramatically influence a young person’s ability to succeed, and therefore must be integrated into any serious strategy aimed at improving life outcomes. Communities that only measure progress through school-based indicators risk overlooking the real barriers families face; a systems-level view that connects education to broader quality-of-life supports is essential.

Corporate partners need to engage authentically and early. It’s critical to be aware of the ways a corporate presence can spark suspicion or resentment due to lack of transparency and community engagement. By involving communities as co-designers of your programs, forging early bonds, and listening humbly, impact leaders can establish trust and credibility.

Philanthropies must balance catalytic investment with humility. While philanthropy plays a vital role in getting cradle-to-career work off the ground, overstepping or trying to “own” the work — particularly when insufficient community input or trust has been established — can unravel progress. 

Rural communities are facing unique workforce tensions. Unlike urban areas, many rural regions lack the job infrastructure to retain skilled youth, creating a disconnect between education and opportunity. This raises critical questions about whether cradle-to-career efforts should focus on helping young people thrive where they are — or prepare them to leave. For truly inclusive economic mobility, rural models must address not only education and training, but also long-term job creation and community vitality.

Policy and systems change must follow practice. While programs and partnerships can drive localized change, real, lasting impact requires policy alignment. Even amid federal dysfunction, local and state policy wins are possible — and crucial. Translating data and outcomes into legislative or regulatory reform ensures that success isn’t limited to a single program or grant cycle.

On Wednesday, May 7, NationSwell community members gathered at Mount Tamalpais College in San Quentin Prison for a guided site visit to explore how education and growth programs can foster growth, resilience, and possibility for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals.

Led by Dr. Jody Lewen — founder and president of Mount Tamalpais College, the independent, tuition-free, accredited college that operates inside the prison — the experience offered a powerful look at how expanded access to quality higher education is about more than learning — it’s a bridge to community, purpose, and hope.

We’ve recapped some of the key insights from the day below.

Key Takeaways:

• Education can be a counterculture
  In carceral systems designed to disconnect, education becomes radical. It’s not just about learning, it’s about reclaiming voice, building community, and engaging with the world in new, life-affirming ways.
• The light of learning disrupts the system
  Mount Tamalpais College offers more than classes, it challenge the very logic of incarceration. Education is a “disturbance in the force.”
• Healing requires space to reflect
  Access to education in prison opens the door to deeper psychological insight. It creates space to confront trauma, build resilience, and help others do the same.
• The system is not rational
  The carceral state is not the product of coherent logic, but a patchwork of arbitrary decisions and policies. We must resist the illusion of inevitability and instead ask who benefits, who’s harmed, and what a more humane system could look like.
• Human worth is inherent
  Regardless of our worst decisions, our pasts, or our circumstances, every person holds equal value and is worthy of dignity, respect, opportunity, and growth. Full stop. Systems can be designed to forget this. We can’t afford to.
• Reentry is a collective responsibility
  The transition out of prison is complex. Career support and alumni services are critical and a space where deeper community partnerships can make a lasting difference. This is an area where Mount Tamalpais College could use our help!
• Proximity is powerful—but depth is essential
  Connection starts with showing up, but it doesn’t end there. The question is: how do we move beyond observation into curiosity, action, and shared storytelling?
• Let people tell their own stories
  Authentic storytelling fosters understanding, not just attention. How do we create space for people to speak in their own words?
• Resist both romanticizing and othering
  Incarcerated people are often cast as either heroes or villains. The truth is more human, more complicated, and more deserving of our full attention. How do we shift society from sensationalizing the experience of incarceration to humanizing it?
• Fair chance hiring is everyone’s work
  Every organization can audit, improve, and advocate. Whether it’s changing internal practices or supporting national reform, inclusive hiring must become standard.
• Bridge-building means welcoming discomfort
  Can we broaden the aperture of experiences like this one? Can we invite in people with different ideologies and use shared reflection to build understanding across differences? What’s the first step? How do we take it?