The Hidden $100,000 Cost of Being Lost After College; Career Coaching for Recent Graduates

For a college graduate, the first five years after graduation can look deceptively inexpensive.

A young person may graduate, move home, take a job, pay the bills and tell themselves, “I’ll figure out what I really want to do eventually.”

But “eventually” can become expensive.

The biggest financial mistake a recent college graduate can make may not be choosing the wrong major, graduating with student debt, or even accepting a relatively low-paying first job. It can be failing to develop the skills necessary to get into the right career in the first place.

The difference between landing a good first job and spending several years taking whatever work is available can easily reach tens of thousands of dollars in direct earnings. More importantly, the consequences can extend well beyond those first few years because early career experience affects the opportunities that come afterward.

Research increasingly demonstrates that the first job matters.

The Strada Education Foundation and Burning Glass Institute followed the career histories of millions of college graduates and found that only about half of bachelor's degree graduates obtain employment in a college-level occupation within a year of graduation. Their research found something particularly important: graduates who secure a college-level job early in their careers are 3.5 times more likely to be in a college-level occupation ten years later than graduates who begin their careers underemployed. (Strada Education Foundation)

That finding changes the way we should think about career preparation. The question isn't simply, “How much does a career coach cost?”

The more important question is "How much can it cost a young person not to have the skills necessary to launch their career successfully?"

What Does a Good First Job Pay?

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported a national mean starting salary of approximately $63,721 for bachelor's degree graduates in the Class of 2024. (Scranton News)

That number is an important benchmark, but it should not be interpreted as meaning that every graduate can expect to earn $63,721. Salaries vary enormously according to major, industry, location, employer and individual qualifications.

For example, Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce found that median earnings for bachelor's degree holders vary dramatically by field of study. Among prime-age workers, median earnings ranged from approximately $58,000 in education and public service fields to $98,000 in STEM fields. The Federal Reserve has similarly found that a graduate's major is a more important predictor of future wages than the selectivity of the college attended. (CEW Georgetown)

Nevertheless, $63,721 provides a reasonable national benchmark for the earnings potential of a college graduate who successfully transitions into the professional workforce.

Now compare that with the types of jobs graduates may take when they cannot land the career-oriented position they want. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 2025 mean annual wages of approximately $46,590 for customer service representatives, $46,420 for general office clerks, and $37,310 for retail salespersons. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

These aren't bad jobs at all. They are legitimate jobs that provide an important service and are perfectly appropriate for those who want to work in those occupations.

The problem occurs when a college graduate takes one of these jobs not because they want that career, but because they don't know how to get into the career they actually want. That distinction is enormous.

The Five-Year Earnings Gap

Let's use the NACE national starting-salary figure of $63,721 as a benchmark for the graduate who successfully launches into a professional career.

Then let's use the BLS mean wage for customer service representatives, which is $46,590, as a conservative proxy for a graduate who takes a job primarily to generate income while remaining outside their intended career path.

The initial annual difference is $17,131 ($63,721 − $46,590).

If that difference remained constant for five years, the graduate would sacrifice $85,655 in gross earnings. This is deliberately a conservative calculation as well, as it assumes that neither person receives raises, promotions or increasingly valuable experience.

Real careers don't work that way.

A graduate who begins acquiring relevant professional experience at age 22 or 23 is building a résumé, professional network, accomplishments, references and credibility. Those assets can make the next job easier to obtain and potentially more valuable.

The person who spends five years working outside their intended field may instead reach age 27 or 28 with five years of experience, but five years of experience that may have little relevance to the career they actually want.

The More Severe Scenario: Retail Job vs. Professional Career

Consider a graduate who takes a typical retail position while trying to figure things out.

The BLS reported a 2025 mean annual wage of approximately $37,310 for retail salespersons. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The difference between that income and the $63,721 national bachelor's-degree starting-salary benchmark is $26,411 per year ($63,721 − $37,310).

Over five years, that adds up to  $132,055 in lost gross earnings. And again, this calculation assumes the wage difference never increases.

The Bigger Cost Isn't the First Five Years

The most important finding from the Strada/Burning Glass research is that the cost of underemployment isn't necessarily confined to the period when someone is underemployed.

Their research found that graduates who obtain a college-level job early in their careers are 3.5 times as likely to be in a college-level job ten years after graduation as those who begin underemployed. (Strada Education Foundation)

That suggests that the first job can have a trajectory effect. A good first job provides more than a paycheck. It can provide:

• Relevant experience.
• Professional accomplishments.
• Industry contacts.
• Mentors.
• References.
• Exposure to better opportunities.
• A stronger résumé.
• Confidence.
• Knowledge of how businesses actually operate.

And perhaps most importantly, proximity to people who can help open the door to the next opportunity.

The graduate who gets into the right professional environment at 22 isn't necessarily earning dramatically more than everyone else forever. But they may be accumulating career capital while someone else is still trying to figure out how to enter the field. That difference compounds.

Why Networking and Interviewing Matter So Much

This is where an uncomfortable reality about college-to-career transitions emerges.

Many graduates spend four years learning how to perform academically but almost no time learning how to sell themselves to another human being.

They may know how to write a résumé and how to submit an online application.

They may have a degree. They may even have good grades.

But they don't necessarily know how to identify the right people inside an organization, start conversations with them, develop relationships, obtain introductions, conduct informational conversations, differentiate themselves from other candidates or perform effectively in an interview.

Those are completely different skills.

And the modern hiring process makes this problem worse.

A graduate can submit hundreds of applications without ever having a meaningful conversation with the person who might actually hire them.

The result is often a frustrating cycle:

1. Apply.
2. Wait.
3. Get rejected.
4. Apply again.
5. Get rejected again.
6. Change the résumé.
7. Apply some more.
8. Become discouraged.
9. Eventually take whatever job is available.

Then rationalize the decision by saying, “I'll work my way into something better.” Sometimes that works.

But the evidence suggests that beginning in a college-level occupation dramatically improves the odds of remaining on a college-level career trajectory. (Strada Education Foundation)

The $10,000 Career Investment: How Career Coaching for Recent Graduates Pays Off

Now consider a hypothetical graduate who invests $10,000 in professional career services from a firm such as Endeavor Agency and its Discovery Career Launch System.

The purpose of such an investment isn't simply to produce a better résumé. The economic objective is to get the graduate into the right career faster and teach them the skills to continue finding better opportunities throughout their career.

Assume the graduate successfully uses the program to obtain a career-oriented position paying approximately $63,721 rather than spending five years in a job paying approximately $46,590.

The estimated five-year earnings advantage would be $85,655.

Subtract the $10,000 investment and the result is a $75,655 net financial benefit.

The return on investment would be 756.6% net ROI.

Put another way, every $1 invested would generate approximately $8.57 in additional gross earnings over five years, before considering taxes, investment returns, benefits or future salary growth.

The $37,310 Scenario

If the alternative is a retail-type job averaging $37,310 annually, the calculation becomes even more dramatic.

The five-year earnings difference is $132,055.

Career services investment of $10,000.

The net financial benefit is $122,055 with a net ROI of 1,220.6%.

In this scenario, the graduate would recover the entire $10,000 investment after earning only about 4.5 months of the annual salary difference.

And that calculation still doesn't assign any monetary value to the career skills acquired during the process.

There Is an Important Caveat

It would be misleading to claim that paying $10,000 to Endeavor Agency automatically produces an $85,000 or $132,000 return. There is no research establishing that particular causal relationship, and individual results will vary. The calculation is an economic model, not a guarantee.

The key question is whether professional career services actually cause a graduate to obtain a better career outcome than they otherwise would have achieved. That depends on the graduate's effort, abilities, chosen field, geographic market, economic conditions and the quality of the career-development program.

But the underlying economic opportunity is real.

A graduate doesn't have to create an enormous salary increase to justify a $10,000 investment. They simply have to shorten the amount of time they spend wandering around.

The Break-Even Point Is Surprisingly Low

Suppose a graduate would otherwise earn $46,590 but, with professional assistance, lands a career-oriented position paying $63,721. The difference is $17,131 per year.

The $10,000 investment would therefore break even after just .58 years (seven months; $10,000 ÷ $17,131).

After that, the additional earnings are economically positive.

Even more interesting is what happens if professional assistance doesn't increase the graduate's eventual salary at all.

Suppose the graduate would eventually have earned $63,721 anyway, but professional career development helps them get there one year earlier.

That one year of accelerated earnings is worth approximately $17,131 compared with the lower-paying alternative.

The $10,000 investment would still produce a positive first-year economic return, and the graduate would have begun accumulating relevant experience one year earlier.

Career Services for New Graduates Should Be Viewed as an Investment, Not an Expense

Parents and other family members routinely spend enormous amounts of money preparing their children for college. They pay for:

• Tuition
• Housing
• Computers
• Books and other supplies
• Internships for college credit
• Study-abroad programs
• Test preparation
• Sometimes graduate school

Yet many families spend comparatively little preparing their children for the moment when all of that education has to be converted into an actual career. That is a strange economic contradiction.

The entire purpose of a college education is, at least in significant part, to increase a person's future economic opportunity.

But possessing the degree doesn't guarantee that the graduate knows how to convert that credential into opportunity.

Strada's research reinforces this point from another direction. Its research found that graduates who reported strong skill development were earning approximately $8,700 more in their first year after graduation than their peers with weaker reported skill development, and that stronger skill development was associated with substantially better perceptions of career outcomes. (Strada Education Foundation)

The lesson is not that every graduate needs to spend $10,000 on career coaching. The lesson is that career-launch skills have economic value.

And that value can be enormous when those skills determine whether a graduate enters the professional workforce at 22, or spends the next several years trying to figure out how to get there.

The Real ROI of Career Launch

The most compelling argument for a program such as Endeavor Agency's Discovery Career Launch System isn't that it might help a graduate negotiate an extra $5,000 in starting salary.

The much larger opportunity is helping the graduate avoid a career detour.

A career detour can look harmless at first:

• “I'm just working this job temporarily.”
• “I'll start networking later.”
• “I need to get some experience first.”
• “I'll figure out what I want to do.”
• “I'll apply to a few more jobs.”

Five years later, the graduate may discover that they have accumulated five years of work experience without five years of meaningful progress toward the career they wanted.

The financial consequences can easily exceed $100,000, and the opportunity cost will continue accumulating.

The graduate who learns how to network, communicate their value, interview effectively and deliberately build professional relationships isn't merely learning how to get their first job.

They are learning how to manage their career for the rest of their working life.

That is why the $10,000 question shouldn't be, “Can I afford to spend $10,000 on career services?”

For a family that has already invested tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a college education, the more important question may be,

“Can I afford not to invest in helping my graduate turn that education into a career?”

The research suggests that the cost of getting the first job wrong can be much larger than most families realize. The New York Federal Reserve reported that the underemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 41.5% in the first quarter of 2026. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

And the Strada/Burning Glass research provides perhaps the strongest warning: the first job isn't just a paycheck. It can determine the trajectory of the next decade. (Strada Education Foundation)

A $10,000 investment in career development may therefore look expensive when viewed as a coaching expense.

Viewed as an investment designed to prevent five years of underemployment, accelerate entry into the desired profession and build skills that can be used repeatedly throughout a career, the economics can look very different.



The greatest financial risk for a college graduate may not be paying for help launching a career. It may be spending five years trying to launch one without knowing how.

Sources

• National Association of Colleges and Employers, First Destinations for the College Class of 2024. (Default)
• Strada Education Foundation and Burning Glass Institute, Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the First Decade of Careers. (Strada Education Foundation)
• Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, The Major Payoff: Evaluating Earnings and Employment Outcomes Across Bachelor's Degrees. (CEW Georgetown)
• Federal Reserve Board, Institution, Major, and Firm-Specific Premia: Evidence from Administrative Data. (Federal Reserve)
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Strada Education Foundation, Value Beyond the Degree: Alumni Perspectives on How College Experiences Improve Their Lives. (Strada Education Foundation)

Frequently Asked Questions About Career Coaching for Recent Graduates