Shaky starts: A jobs drought for new grads

New college grads are struggling to find jobs, said Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. The U.S. economy added 177,000 positions in April, another stronger-than-expected report for the overall labor market. But one group is getting left behind. The "labor conditions for recent college graduates have 'deteriorated noticeably' in the past few months," according to the New York Federal Reserve. Their unemployment rate now stands at 5.8 percent—a full 1.6 percentage points above that of the overall population. It's hard to pinpoint what's going on. But we must take seriously the possibility that "artificial intelligence is starting to transform the economy." Entry-level jobs are the easiest to replace with machines. We're seeing that happen to paralegal work, consulting, and computer programming.

Gen Zers, the cohort born starting in 1997, are "already deeply uncertain about the value of a college degree," said Amanda Hoover in Business Insider, and half of them already say it's "a waste of money." The hiring drought for new grads is making them even more pessimistic. The ease of implementing automation is forming cracks "in some white-collar industry pipelines" that college graduates rely on. The tech industry, for instance, which "has long been accused of favoring young talent to move fast and break things," is now hiring AI for the same purpose. Tech job postings have fallen from 625,000 in January 2023 to 467,000 in March 2025, and the share of jobs that are entry level has dropped from 24 percent to 21 percent.

It's tempting to blame the machines, said Justin Fox in Bloomberg, but things have been "somewhat off" for recent grads since the pandemic. The increase in "the percentage of Americans in their 20s, especially their late 20s," who are not in education, working, or training "is pretty striking," and it may be linked to "how the pandemic disrupted the lives" of young adults. One scary sign: 14 percent of job seekers ages 18 to 24 feel like their mental health is keeping them from joining the workforce. That "feels new and alarming."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Even graduates of the most prestigious programs are in trouble, said Dennis McCarthy in National Review. "There was a time when a degree from Harvard Business School was a golden ticket." But as of February, "nearly a quarter of last year's HBS grads were still looking for a job." That mirrors the problem across education. The default response from both undergraduate and graduate programs "is to offer increasingly specialized programs in narrow, siloed majors." That is "a fool's errand." The marketplace is shifting rapidly. We need to equip students to learn "the skills for any job they seek."