It's a tough market for entry-level SOC analysts. It has been since...well, as long as I can remember.

IT Help Desk experience is a huge plus, for landing future SOC analyst roles, if you can get some.

My advice is:

• Hang ang in there and keep at it. The first security job is the hardest to land.
• Do some independent training if you have time. Hack the Box and OWASP Juice Shop have free resources, so you can keep growing. Remember that increasing your skills does lead to cash, but it sometimes takes a lot of time.
• Be on the lookout for remote postings. There's very little done by a SOC, today, that can't be done remotely, so it's not critical to limit your search by geography, anymore.
• Learn some programming, if you haven't already. SOC operations are less painful with some scripting skill. (My own path into Cybersecurity was due to my coding skills, not any Cybersecurity certificate.)