LONDON (AP) - British fashion school graduate Phoebe St. Leger's dream of landing a job at a design label is on hold. Like many others in the global Class of 2020, the pandemic is clouding her career ambitions.
The coronavirus forced the cancellation of her university graduating class's final-year fashion show, removing the chance to show her knitwear collection to people in the industry, some of whom might have liked her work enough to offer her a job.
Instead, St. Leger, 23, returned to her family home in Winchester, southern England, and submitted her classwork online. She has applied for about 40 jobs and received only rejections.
"All the jobs have all dried up - everywhere," she said. She knows graduates from previous years who have been fired or furloughed and is prepared to get a job at a bar. "It's still hard to be hopeful when you're not seeing anyone doing well at the moment."
Around the world, young people armed with new degrees, diplomas and professional qualifications are struggling to enter the workforce as the pandemic pushes the global economy into recession. COVID-19 has thwarted hopes of landing first jobs - important for jumpstarting careers - as employers cut back graduate recruiting plans or even revoke job offers.
The U.S. job numbers Friday underscored the murky outlook: 1.8 million jobs were added in July, a sharp slowdown in employment growth from the month before. It means the world's biggest economy has regained just 42 percent of jobs lost to the coronavirus.
U.S. careers website Glassdoor said the number of jobs advertised as "entry level" or "new grad" was down 68 percent in May from a year ago. In Britain, companies plan to cut student recruitment by 23 percent this year, according to a survey of 179 businesses by the Institute of Student Employers.
The wave of delayed employment will ripple out through the economy, said Brian Kropp, chief of HR research at consultancy Gartner.
Many grads will have student loan debts they won't be able to start paying off until they find a job, he said.
"If you can't get an entry level job today, that means that you don't move out of your parent's house, you don't develop real work experience, you don't buy your first home until later and you don't get married until later," Kropp said.
One important long-term effect for young graduates who take longer to find good first jobs is lower pay over the course of their careers, experts said.
Someone who takes a year or more to find their first job lags behind their peers when it comes to promotions and also competes with younger people who come on to the job market later.
The problem, like the pandemic, is global.
Graduate job vacancies for July are down from the previous year in 10 countries, according to Adzuna, a job postings search engine. Britain, India and the Netherlands have seen the biggest declines, with postings down by more than half from a year ago, but other countries including Austria, Australia, Brazil and France are also seeing double-digit percentage drops.
Graduate jobs are expected to shrink in 21 countries, with most unlikely to recover next year, according to a separate report by Britain's ISE.
The pandemic is compounding problems for young people in countries plagued by chronic economic instability.
Two years after graduating with from Zimbabwe's Midlands State University, 24-year-old Emmanuel Reyai is no closer to his goal of getting a job related to his degree in local governance. His search is stymied by both the African country's economic collapse and the coronavirus outbreak.
"I have applied more than 40 times - nothing," he said, clutching a plastic folder containing his academic certificates.
More than two thirds of Zimbabwe's population, including university grads, get by on informal trade such as street hawking. Reyai initially resold cooking gas from a shack in his poor Harare neighborhood, but the local council razed it after the outbreak. Now he makes and sells peanut butter around the city.
"There are no hopes of getting a job," Reyai said. "I have tried all I can to apply for jobs but the situation is not getting any better. It is actually getting worse."