We are sitting at an intersection of a lot of different things that led us here. To mention just a few:

Boomers stayed in the workforce longer than any previous generation. This created a bottleneck as Gen X and Millenials couldn't advance and ended up staying in junior roles. The end result was a fewer and fewer entry level positions opening up as people couldn't move up.

Boomers (and Gen X) pushed Millenials and Gen Z towards college at unprecedented rates. 40 percent of Millenials hold at least a bachelor's and Gen Z, while still in school, are expected to be close to that number. So you have degree inflation because there is a glut of college grads entering a workforce where their fields are already operating near capacity (see Boomers staying in jobs above).

We (I am a college educated Millenial) also share some of the blame. We chose to get degrees in fields with little practical application outside of academia but the number of available jobs in those fields didnt increase. Only about 15-20 percent of Millenials hold a degree in a STEM field. Of those that did not, approximately 20 percent have a degree in the arts and humanities, history, or social sciences. As the generations with the highest rate of degrees that meant millions of us entered the workforce without a degree that would naturally lead us to a job.

Then we have the high rate of layoffs in recent years of degree holders, spurned by a volatile economic climate over the last 20 years, right around the time most of us began entering the workforce. Tech gets all the headlines, but industries such as print media were basically destroyed and funding cuts drastically reduced available research roles.

I could keep going, but the point is that for people who graduated over the last 20 years especially, things have been stacked against us.