And to add to Wombat’s fine post- this is reality for EVERYONE graduating right now (or having graduated without an offer in hand like your D.) The oil and gas engineers are pivoting (there is hiring but often not where a kid wants to be and not always in the functional area the kid is interested in), the Civil engineers are a bit at the mercy of waiting for the federal budget to pass to see what is going to happen with “shovel ready” infrastructure projects which get both state and federal financing; the finance majors are being put on a slow walk to see if the recession is going to be localized or all over the place all at once, the marketing majors are suffering from reduced consumer demand due to tariffs, and EVERYONE in health care seems to be put on hold right now wondering what is happening with Medicaid/Medicare and how deep the “we will never cut Medicaid/Medicare” promises from last November will go. If the cuts are deep, the entire industry (pharma, managed care, hospitals, allied health professionals, devices, research of all kinds, etc.) is going to be put on ice.
So parents should encourage their kids to be broad (i.e. go wherever the jobs are, in whatever industry) and deep (if their particular niche isn’t hiring right now, find a nearby niche and go for that along with everything else). Human factors is an important discipline in automotive , aviation, industrial design, etc. So these are important sectors to explore.
I still think the D should post her own queries- will get more helpful responses once we find out how many of her professors have offered to help her (hopefully more than one) and how broad/deep her search has been…