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How the pandemic job market left young people stuck

Dumariyea Ballew, 25, sits on the couch in his apartment in his College Hill neighborhood. Ballew thought he was set after accepting a job as an admissions counselor for Chatfield College in February 2020, but after the coronavirus pandemic took hold, he was soon laid off.

Dumariyea Ballew was still in training at his first job out of college when he was laid off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I have never been laid off of a job before,” he said. “I've never even been fired from a job before.”

When Ballew got the job as an admissions counselor for Chatfield College after graduating from the University of Cincinnati, he thought it would be a good first step to his dream of being an academic advisor.

His new job started in early February 2020. Ballew was laid off in late March. Now he was back at square one in the middle of a pandemic. 

At first, Ballew was optimistic he would find something quickly.

He didn’t.

College graduate Dumariyea Ballew had a job, then he didn't. He thought it wouldn't take long to recover. The year had other ideas.

Instead, he spent months checking job sites and reaching out to people, trying to find something. He got a job at Jimmy John’s just to pay the bills.

 “For a while, I thought that I was doing stuff wrong,” he said. “I felt discouraged. I felt like I wasn't a proper adult.”

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For a lot of young people, the concepts of adulthood and having a job are tangled up in one another.


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