Struggling with finding a job? Me too. I’m about to leave grad school and after a lot of applications with no responses, it’s been feeling a little bleak. But there’s hope! Here’s five career paths for new grads and job-seekers in the fast-changing labor market of 2026.

1) Drudgery

Description: Fortunately for us, there’s one category of job that will never go away: doing things you don’t want to do for nothing. It’s the oldest job there is.

Pros: it’s a living

Cons: might as well die

2) Guttersnipe

Description: Poverty. But in a fun, old-timey way! See also: mendicant, gnaw-bone, bindlestiff, misérable, homely swain.

Pros: wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade

Cons: Rozzers

3) AI Agent

Description: Don’t lose your job to AI; become AI. Take advantage of the new demand for autonomously-generated work emails, high school papers, and delusional sycophancy behind the front of a “subscription service chatbot” designed for “record-breaking resource efficiency” and “minimum geographic footprint.” Not to mention “100% organic waste products that can be reused or returned to nature.”

Pros: high demand

Cons: occasional manslaughter, listening to people’s stupid little business ideas

4) Stylite

Description: Simeon Stylites was an Early Christian hermit. He lived on a barren mountaintop for years before retiring from that fast-paced, sociable lifestyle to his new vocation: living on top of a very tall pole in the desert.

Pros: guaranteed housing, part of an ancient tradition

Cons: people can still come to base of pole, yell news up at you

5) Driver of Death’s carriage

Description: speaks for itself

Pros: high potential for growth

Cons: the bone horse

In other news, a trailer for the web-series:

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