Sadie Parker was fretting about finding a job.

Many people she knew were having trouble landing work. She had wanted to join the Foreign Service, but she was worried that federal spending cuts could limit her options. She was petrified that artificial intelligence would wipe out other entry-level jobs.

“I was extremely anxious,” said Ms. Parker, 22, who will graduate in June from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a double major in political science and economics.

To improve her chances, she broadened her search, applying for positions in consulting and other fields. She spent hours on a cover letter for a job at KPMG, the accounting firm, advising the California state government.

“I was like, wow, this looks so interesting,” she said. “The next day, I got a rejection.”

Recent college graduates are facing the most dismal and unpredictable job market in years. Employers overall are hiring fewer workers, dimming the prospects in particular for first-time entrants to the labor market. The rise of A.I. and its abilities are intensifying fears that entry-level jobs will disappear forever.

Junior-level postings on the job site Indeed fell 7 percent in 2025 from the previous year, according to a report the company released last week.

“As a job seeker, you’re having to work a lot harder to land that same job now because the competition has just really stiffened in the last couple years,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed.

Those forces have transformed the spring graduation season into a bruising ordeal for many of America’s youngest degree holders.

In interviews and in responses to a New York Times survey, some college seniors and recent graduates said they had applied to more than 100 jobs without securing so much as a first-round interview. A number have resorted to tracking their applications using detailed Excel spreadsheets.

There is a swelling collective suspicion that A.I. is rejecting applications before human recruiters ever lay eyes on them.

The hunt has frustrated nascent career dreams and forced many job seekers to recalibrate their postgraduation plans. Some are working as servers at pizza joints, as baristas at coffee shops and in other jobs that do not require college degrees. Others have plans to attend graduate school to avoid the labor market altogether. Whereas embarking on a career used to be a goal after college, increasingly it is having any job at all.

“I’m, like, is it me or is it really, like, the market right now?” said Natalia Martinez, 24, a senior at the University of Central Florida. “I just feel like it’s so hard for somebody to take a chance on a college graduate.”

Ms. Martinez said she had applied to 150 jobs since February — “really anything that comes up in my area,” she said, including for positions as a receptionist or medical assistant — but she has not been successful. She spends sleepless nights doom-scrolling for jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed and is preparing for the possibility that she may have to move back in with her parents after graduation.

“I feel like I’m doing everything that I possibly can,” she said. “I just want some kind of path.”

Angst on college campuses about future employment is perennial and escalates during hiring slowdowns, when companies are more reluctant to bring on inexperienced workers. A front-page article in The Times in April 1991, for instance, took note of “traumatized seniors” whose job searches had “become a disheartening struggle of résumés, rejection and uncertainty.”

But fueled by the frenzy around A.I. and public prognostications of job market ruin, the typical jitters have hardened into dread.

“Students are definitely nervous,” said Sean McGowan, the director of employer relations at Carnegie Mellon University.

College graduates typically do better during economic downturns than workers without degrees. And while there have been dire predictions about A.I.’s effect on employment, the technology so far has not led to widespread job losses.

Still, the challenging job market has revived age-old questions among college students and recent graduates about whether going to college is worth it.

“I thought getting a college degree was the answer to everything,” said Lucy Kinyanjui, 22, a senior at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. “I feel like we just have to wait it out. I feel like getting my degree now is kind of useless.”

Ms. Kinyanjui, who juggles classes with work as a server at Topgolf, said she was constantly thinking about applying for more lucrative jobs that aligned with a career in health care. But she is concerned that her degree, in liberal studies, will not appeal to potential employers, especially in such a tough job market. She is thinking about getting a master’s degree eventually in the hope that it will make her more employable.

“I’m afraid of the rejection that I’m going to face,” she said.

Johnathon McCartney, 23, has felt similarly discouraged. A senior at the University of Florida who transferred from Colby College in Maine after his freshman year, Mr. McCartney studied public relations and wanted to get a job in communications. He focused his search on the Louisville, Ky., area so he could live near his girlfriend, but snubs piled up, including from a local P.R. firm.

“I applied for an internship with them and I interviewed, and I didn’t even get that,” he said. “Who is this state-level firm taking for a P.R. internship if not me?”

Mr. McCartney recently accepted a remote job as an immigration services officer with the federal government.

“I just feel fortunate or grateful that this is an opportunity that ended up working out for me,” he said.

For Ms. Parker, the senior at U.C. Santa Barbara, the sense of urgency was growing. None of her applications seemed to be gaining traction with employers. As A.I.’s technology improved, she wondered if she was running out of time to find an entry-level job.

“I was very much like, OK, I got to make sure I do this now,” she said.

When one of her friends suggested that she apply for a job as a finance associate at a large health technology company, she jumped at the chance even though she did not have experience in finance. She reached out to the company’s recruiters on LinkedIn and set up an informational chat.

Over the course of three months, Ms. Parker had one interview with the company, then another, and another.

“It was kind of a stressful process,” she said.

Three weeks after her third interview, in mid-December, she heard back for the last time.

She had gotten the job.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman in 18th-century Boston, was “the first American of her background” to publish a book of poetry. That background? Unclear.

Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery, was “a classic example of how individual effort and a ‘can-do’ spirit can overcome any obstacle in a free society.” The obstacles he overcame? Unsaid.

And the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

“With incredible can-do spirit, he led a movement to ensure that every citizen would be judged by the ‘content of their character’ rather than their outward appearance. His ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, is one of the most powerful calls for national unity in our history.”

These snippets are part of guidelines for a new national student competition connected with President Trump’s proposed National Garden of American Heroes, and the latest window into the administration’s broader efforts to recast the country’s history in a sunnier key.

The American Heroes Student Art Contest was announced on Thursday in a video featuring Linda McMahon, the secretary of education. It is sponsored by Freedom 250, a group Mr. Trump created to promote his signature events commemorating this year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which include a prayer rally on the National Mall in May and a Grand Prix car race around Washington in August.

The 168 first-place winners, from each state and territory, will be invited this summer to Washington, where their art will be displayed at the Great American State Fair, a Trump-backed event that will occupy the Mall from June 25 to July 10.

Freedom 250 did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to to provide an update on the status of Mr. Trump’s patriotic sculpture garden, a project he teased in his first term and returned to in his second. While the administration had previously indicated it would be ready by July 4, no designs or even the location have been released.

But the art contest, which is open to students in grades 3-12, is being greeted skeptically by some historians and educators, who see it as missing more than just important facts.

“It removes the drama and energy and friction that makes history or personal stories interesting,” said John Dichtl, the president and chief executive of the American Association for State and Local History. “It doesn’t leave any place for an individual to connect with and make it part of their history of America.”

The garden project has inspired a mix of curiosity, speculation and, among historians, concern, including over how it will treat its eclectic mix of 250 heroes Mr. Trump has selected for recognition. The choices mix traditional American icons like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Babe Ruth and the Wright Brothers with figures like Kobe Bryant, Julia Child, Hannah Arendt and the “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek.

Questions about the numerous civil rights activists set for inclusion have been especially sharp, particularly as the Trump administration has begun removing references to slavery, civil rights and other subjects it sees as divisive from National Park Service sites across the country.

The 85 pages of biographies provided to help students with their entries, which must include a 200-word text, suggest an approach that emphasizes national unity, meritocracy and individual rights, while glossing over the fact that many of the heroes exemplify traditions of protest and dissent.

The words “slavery” or “slave” appear only twice, including in the entry on Frederick Douglass, who “escaped from slavery to become a leading voice for liberty.” Douglass is presented not as an opponent of slavery — the word “abolitionist” and its variants do not appear in the document — but as “a proud patriot who loved his country and wanted to see it become the best version of itself.”

The phrase “civil rights” appears in only one biography, for the actor Charlton Heston, who is described as “a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement” who once marched with Dr. King, as well as an advocate for gun rights.

By contrast, references to the “can-do” American spirit appear 32 times, including in entries for Orville Wright, Sojourner Truth, Dolley Madison, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dr. Seuss.

There is also no acknowledgment that some who fought to defend liberty, equality and national unity have faced violence from fellow Americans.

The entry for Abraham Lincoln, hailed as an example of how “a person of humble beginnings can rise to the highest office through character and merit,” refers to the Emancipation Proclamation. But it includes no reference to the fact that he was assassinated by a supporter of Southern slavery, a topic covered in children’s books.

The entries for Dr. King and the civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who is acknowledged for helping “spark a movement that strengthened the foundations of American liberty,” also make no reference to the fact that they were murdered.