First off I'm sorry about the job struggles. It's clear that you must be feeling awful and it's certainly possible that you're suffering from depression. Whether this depression is just a state of mind related to your employment struggles or has neurochemical foundations is something you'd have to talk to a professional about. Regardless, your depression is real and not something you should feel ashamed about (as hard as that may be).
As someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder who's been to the bargain bin basement of mental health (depressive episodes lasting over a year), I can talk with you a lot about anti-depressants and their effectiveness. Short story is they're weird. I've been on a few and while some felt like they did nothing, others did genuinely make life feel less absolutely torturous to experience.
I can also empathize with your fears about talking about your feelings with your boyfriend. I entered a severe depressive episode while a year into a serious relationship and it ruined it. I went from energetic, social, and ambitious to an absolute mess who was miserable to be around. I spiraled down hard. I left school, fell into drug addiction, and developed suicidal thoughts, yet my even then my SO tried very hard to stick with me through all of it. After 6 months of this however I pushed her away because I wanted her to be happy and I couldn't see how that was possible with someone as "broken" as me. I don't know if this saved her any pain in the long run, but it made it much much harder to break out of my depressive cycle.
My advice, you should still talk with your boyfriend or your friends about how you feel. Chances are they already know that somethings wrong, though they likely don't fully understand the difficulty and pain you're dealing with. What you need is a support network to help you through this difficult period however, and while it can seem frightening admitting to your friends or SO that you're feeling depressed, at the end of the day all they want is for you to feel happy and good about yourself and they'll help however they can.
The bottom line is yes, what you're feeling is legitimate, and yes, you can get through this. You'll never wake up one morning and feel suddenly cured, but one day you will be able to look back on this moment as a dark period of your life you were able to overcome, and you will feel all the stronger for it.