It’s a relief not to have been pressganged into joining the Prime Minister’s plane-load of business chiefs and reporters bound for Beijing this week. Is it about ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ that employers won’t look at, or an epidemic of Gen Z listlessness, or an AI-fuelled crash in vacancies, or all three? His firm handles 20,000 applications per month but only the very top echelon find the career path of their choice or dreams. There are still jobs to be had in financial services and niche sectors such as ‘proptech’. She backed away with a look of horror – and I realised I was still wearing full panto-dame make-up with purple eyeshadow.