So many Americans are out there struggling with the modern job market. It’s clearly not as easy to find a job as it was a decade ago. On top of that, so many people aren’t making as much as they used to and yet the price of everything is consistently skyrocketing. It really doesn’t make sense and so many families are suffering as a result. One Illinois woman talks about the dead-end jobs she’s been facing for the past decade of her life. She bought into the lie that having a college degree can make everything better and now she wonders where she can turn.
We’ve been told for years in high school that going to college will assure that we get the career and pay that we want. However, TikToker Abby (@add.to.cart.column) says that this isn’t always the case. She’s been through turmoil trying to keep full-time work over the past decade. In her most recent video, she tells her audience with tears in her eyes that she found out she’ll be let go from her recent seasonal job. She’s been working there for the past three months. Now, she says “I am starting 2026 with PTSD from every single job that I have had since graduating college that’s ended in mass layoffs.”
Abby is 33 years old. She says, “I have not been able to get my feet under me with a college degree for ten years.” She says she’s overqualified and deserves better but, like so many others, can’t stay employed. This is a major company failure because retention is so low and it wasn’t always this way. Now, it seems like a lot of large companies are failing to keep employees on for more than just a few months at a time.
Because of constantly finding herself out of work, Abby says, “I don’t have money to live.” This is a common issue so many Americans face. It makes it difficult to survive out there in this expensive world. She’s found herself in desperate situations where she barely had enough to put a roof over their head. I’m sure so many of us feel that this is incredibly familiar and it’s a panic-inducing feeling.
Even though Abby completed her degree, she says, “I can’t even get a job that pays my rent. I truly don’t even know how I’m going to get through the next few hours.” Experience this feeling a couple of times and you’re bound to experience a life of high anxiety and wondering when the next thing is going to be pulled away from you. This is why so many of us in our 20s, 30s, and 40s can never feel relaxed. It’s obvious Abby’s nervous system is fried from all the back-and-forth with unstable employment.
One commenter replied, “Our entire system is crashing and turning upside down.” Another commenter shared, “I was the chief engineer at a CBS affiliate. Every last person in the newsroom (whose parents were not subsidizing them) had a second job in order to pay the rent.” Abby replied to this, “And here we have institutional failure of wages not keeping up with inflation. Affordability – housing, healthcare, groceries.” She already figured out the problem at its root… Now how do we fix it?
