Were there ever that many low-level Junior jobs though?
In my experience, almost everyone in college would get an internship Junior / Senior year and convert into an FTE after graduation. Those that were not so talented or not so lucky usually struggled to find work, taking many months to finally land a job. Most typically at a Booz Allen Hamilton type of place that was just throwing bodies into seats.
At all of my employers, I’ve never really seen any openings for Juniors, only Mid and Senior positions. The few Juniors we did bring on outside of an internship pipeline were either internal transfers, e.g. a SOC analyst given a chance or a nepotism type of hire.
I got out of school 15 years ago so its been a while now, but at that time there were a ton of junior roles.
I got a CS bachelors from a decent state school, nothing fancy, and everyone I kept in touch with had found an entry level role pretty quickly after graduation.
I did do an internship and had an offer from them, but the psy was pretty low and I really didn't want to move where they were. It was a bit stressful turning that down early senior year without a backup yet, but I ended up with quite a few interviews and an offer before graduation.
It took me ~2 years after graduation to find a development job, which was from a "can you code HTML by hand?" classified on craigslist.
That's funny because I've been rejected from Booz Allen so many times lol
The fun part is when BAH rejects you, but you end up at a sub-contractor working side-by-side with the guys that rejected you anyway.