StubHub laid him off, he turned to restaurant work in New York City

Steven Lowe landed a six-figure art director role at StubHub in early 2024 — the highest-paying job of his career and the first time he could comfortably make his student loan payments. A little over a year later, he was laid off. Reentering the job market after nine years at Boxed proved challenging, so Lowe began applying to anything he felt remotely capable of.

A recruiter shifted him from a product-design search into a newly created art director position at StubHub, but he learned in mid-April that his role was being cut. With unemployment benefits running out and rent higher after a recent move, Lowe turned to hospitality.

He found a host opening at Rosemary's in Manhattan through Harri, attended an open call and was hired within days. The job paid $22 an hour for roughly 26 hours a week while he continued applying for creative roles. In May he accepted an administrative assistant position he had freelanced for previously; it offers full-time hours and more stability but pays about 60% to 70% less than his StubHub job.

stubhub, layoff, art director, hospitality, new york, rosemary's, harri, unemployment benefits, student loans, administrative assistant