During her five-month job search, recent University of Nevada, Reno graduate Emily Hess applied to around 400 jobs. She only heard back from seven.

Hess graduated in May with degrees in journalism and English. She eventually landed a role at a public relations firm through a connection. Without her extensive networking throughout college, she may not have landed a job, she said.

“It’s really hard right now,” Hess said. “My parents kept telling me to keep at it and eventually it would come to fruition. But I also have friends who’ve been job hunting for over a year that are in the class of 2024 that still have little prospects.”

With a 5.5 percent unemployment rate, Nevada still trails every other U.S. state. In Clark County, the rate is lower, at 4.9 percent, according to 2023 Census estimates. For ages 20 to 24 in Las Vegas, the unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. For ages 25-29, it’s 6.6 percent.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s unemployment rate for educated residents has steadily declined in recent years, and the state’s hiring rate, 3.9 percent, beats most other states, suggesting a strong labor market.

Mixed signals

Still, for many entry-level positions recent graduates are seeking, opportunities can prove few and far between.

According to a February survey by student-focused job search platform Handshake, 56 percent of college seniors were pessimistic about entering the workforce this year.

“It’s a very competitive market right now because you have folks who left previous positions and are now looking for positions so they have experience,” said Kass Moore, director of career and life design at UNLV’s Career Services and Workforce Development office. “Our new grads, if they didn’t have an internship or they didn’t have an experience or learning opportunity, they’re feeling a very slight disadvantage.”

The Silver State’s unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders has steadily decreased in recent years. It currently stands at 2.7 percent, down from 3.1 percent last year and a high of 6.7 percent in 2021, according to data from Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

The trend suggests a growing economy and, in theory, a healthy job market. Job growth in Nevada is beginning to show signs of rebounding following a post-pandemic shock, while job creation remains stagnant in the Las Vegas area, according to DETR’s current employment statistics.

“I think the trends are still moving in the right direction and maybe getting just a little bit better than they were, say, three months ago,” DETR chief economist David Schmidt said.

Schmidt added that Nevada’s sky-high unemployment rate is primarily driven by new talent entering the labor market and seeking work, rather than by job losses. He pointed to Nevada’s labor force participation rate and employment-to-population ratio, both of which are increasing.

Despite a strong June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Stephen Miller, professor and research director at UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, said the U.S. job market is beginning to soften.

“It’s softening slowly,” Miller said. “It’s slowing down, but it’s still very positive.”

With the nationwide unemployment rate slowly increasing, the average duration of unemployment is doing the same. It increased from 20.7 weeks in June 2024 to 23 weeks in June 2025. Though comparable data is not readily available for Nevada, it suggests an increased difficulty in finding suitable work.

In the past few years, Nevada’s labor market conditions have changed significantly. In the Las Vegas Valley, job growth is strong, but recent college graduates aren’t feeling the effects of that as much as other groups.

‘The job search is a full-time job’

Moore’s advice to students hasn’t changed: Stack your resume with skills AI tools might be searching for, tailor your interview responses to the job description and put in the requisite time and energy.

“This isn’t the first time you’re hearing that the job search is a full-time job,” Moore said. “But knowing that it is going to take this level of commitment, and it’s going to take this level of energy and time, it will produce positive outcomes, even though maybe we have to submit a couple more applications than we did over the past few years due to the competition.”

If Hess were to start her job search over today, she said, she would have started applying earlier, fine-tuned her resume for specific positions and focused more intently on the positions she was especially interested in.

“The job I have now, I am incredibly grateful for it,” Hess said.

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