The Broken Marketplace: America’s School-to-Work Crisis
July 15, 2025
The Biggest Workforce Crisis No One is Talking About.
Many young Americans seek professional success but face fractured pathways from high school to the job market. The people meant to support and guide them — parents, teachers, counselors, and employers — often have misaligned expectations and provide outdated guidance.
That is the reality revealed in The Broken Marketplace: America’s School-to-Work Crisis, a national research effort commissioned by the Schultz Family Foundation and conducted by research consultancy HarrisX to understand why so many young adults feel stalled at the starting line and what it will take to help them move forward.
The research sheds new light on how the system designed to support young adults on the journey from school to work is fundamentally out of sync with the rapidly shifting modern economy. And it is poised to
get worse as advances in artificial intelligence further impact the labor market.
Parents offer advice shaped by their own past, even as the world their children face has changed dramatically. Navigators — educators, guidance counselors, community leaders, and career and workforce specialists — often lack the time or tools to help students plan for what comes next. Employers want experience, but few provide it. Each group assumes someone else is filling the gap. In reality, many young people are left to figure it out alone.