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Recent College Graduates Face Higher Unemployment Than Other Workers - for the First Time in Decades (msn.com) 131

Posted by EditorDavid from the summer-breaks dept.
"A growing group of young, college-educated Americans are struggling to find work," reports the Minnesota Star Tribune, "as the unemployment rate for recent graduates outpaces overall unemployment for the first time in decades." While the national unemployment rate has hovered around 4% for months, the rate for 20-something degree holders is nearly 6%, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. [And for young workers (ages 22 to 27) without a degree it's 6.9%.] The amount of time young workers report being unemployed is also on the rise.

Economists attribute some of the shift to normal post-pandemic cooling of labor market, which is making it harder for job-seekers of all ages to land a gig. But there's also widespread economic uncertainty causing employers to pull back on hiring and signs AI could replace entry-level positions....

Business schools nationwide were among the first to see the labor market shift in early 2023 as tech industry cuts bled into other sectors, said Maggie Tomas, Business Career Center executive director at Carlson. Tariffs and stock market volatility have only added to the uncertainty, she said. In 2022, when workers had their pick of jobs, 98% of full-time Carlson MBA graduates had a job offer in a field related to their degree within three months of graduation, according to the school. That number, which Tomas said is usually 90% or higher, dropped to 89% in 2023 and 83% in 2024.

Part of the challenge, she said, is recent graduates are now competing with more experienced workers who are re-entering the market amid layoffs and hiring freezes... After doing a lot of hiring in 2021 and 2022, Securian Financial in St. Paul is prioritizing internal hires, said Human Resources Director Leah Henrikson. Many entry-level roles have gone to current employees looking for a change, she said. "We are still looking externally, it's just the folks that we are looking for externally tend ... to fulfill a specific skill gap we may have at that moment in time," Henrikson said.

Recent College Graduates Face Higher Unemployment Than Other Workers - for the First Time in Decades More | Reply

Recent College Graduates Face Higher Unemployment Than Other Workers - for the First Time in Decades

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  • What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Oh really now ( 5490472 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @09:05PM (#65501952)
    Recipe for success?
    1. 1. Make college very expensive
    2. 2. Teach very little, build no usable experience
    3. 3. Make every graduate believe they're worth six figures out of the gate

    I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.

    • Recipe for success?

      1. 1. Make college very expensive
      2. 2. Teach very little, build no usable experience
      3. 3. Make every graduate believe they're worth six figures out of the gate

      I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.

      This is all well and good, but how do you know who to interview? You either need personal recommendations, or you go entirely off their resume. The part about hiring good people is obvious, but it's also obvious that absent the recommendation, you can't tell anything about how good they are. That's why something that is probably not that much of a discriminator becomes so important for someone who has very little work experience.

      • Recipe for success?

        1. 1. Make college very expensive
        2. 2. Teach very little, build no usable experience
        3. 3. Make every graduate believe they're worth six figures out of the gate

        I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.

        This is all well and good, but how do you know who to interview? You either need personal recommendations, or you go entirely off their resume. The part about hiring good people is obvious, but it's also obvious that absent the recommendation, you can't tell anything about how good they are. That's why something that is probably not that much of a discriminator becomes so important for someone who has very little work experience.

        Yes, networking is an important job skill. Even if many people in here don't like the idea.

        New graduates should be looking at entry level jobs. Of course there isn't much to go on in regards to the person, but finding out is just part of the entry level process.

        One way to winnow out the wheat from the chaff is give the interviewee a problem to solve. In my current employ, I was asked to provide a my thoughts and ideas about a big problem they were having. So I went to it, did my sit quietly for a few

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      I am genuinely embarrassed this got modded up.

      Have any of you idiots put a kid through college recently? Workload is insane.

      Take everything we had to do when you went to college, now add a shitload more classes and then on top of that at a ton of classes that are basically on the job training that you are paying for. That's college now.

      In exchange for this you will get access to substantially more money than if you didn't go to college. Yeah I know there are plumbers out there running their own

      • Yeah. I dunno. When I was an undergrad, we didn't have Google and the like. Hell, the card catalog was useful technology. We did have word processors, thank god.

        As for "shitload more classes", I'm kinda doubtful. Isn't an undergrad degree still about 130 credits? Unless it is substantially more than that, there isn't a shitload more classes.

        I'm not buying your comment about 300 level classes and working either. I was taking 500 and 600 level classes and working, fairly recently. Can you state and cite an

        • All I can tell you is what I went through with my kid.

          I had four to five classes per semester and they had six to seven. I know because I paid for them.

          Basically on top of the usual Gen Ed stuff my cat had all their undergraduate work and a whole bunch of additional undergraduate work and a couple of classes that were on the job training. The on the job training really stung because I paid thousands of dollars for something that when I was a kid you got paid to do. But that's modern corporate Americ

          • Cats aren't known of accurately choosing workloads. Cats also generally loaf about laying in the sun. So extra training is needed for them to be able to perform jobs which requires the services of special trainers who are expensive to employee.

      • Good for you and your kid, I wish you the best. Although it's a bit of a stretch to generalize your single data point on to the whole society. But you are also missing his point. Yes you are right that a degree opens up many doors. That does not invalidate his experience hiring people. The shitshow is real, and it's real in more ways than what we are personally aware of.

        The fact that college requires a lot of work does not go one step towards proving that the work is meaningful, nor that anything learned is

        • It's not a single data point. I spoke with counselors several times because I didn't believe how bad things were and was repeatedly told this is just how it is now.

          Kids work harder now than we did. They're going into a world that demands more out of them and gives them much much less for it. And it's the world we created for them.

          We are leaving them a shit sandwich and rather than face the misery and guilt that goes with that we just tell ourselves that it must just be fine somewhere somehow.

          One

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jhon ( 241832 )

        "In exchange for this you will get access to substantially more money than if you didn't go to college."

        No you don't. You have a CHANCE to access that.

        The problem is there are much more college graduates than jobs that warrant that "substantially more money".

        The hardest hit are those with certain arts or humanities jobs -- at least as far as pay. a BA/BS just isn't going to win you that 6-figure pay to allow someone to pay off their student loans unless you planned your major very well.

        To be fair, some of

        • Good point but you have a much higher chance. You can do the googling you will quickly find that college graduates still have better outcomes. Even with the slightly higher unemployment.

          Remember all those plumbers can only make money if we build new cities which we stopped doing. You don't make money as a plumber you make money running a plumbing company. To do that you need a growing population with new cities otherwise the market gets saturated. And you end up stuck working $20 an hour for somebody.

      • Yeah I know there are plumbers out there running their own businesses but if you're not running your own business you top out at $20 an hour. The same goes for welders unless they are doing crazy dangerous shit.

        Average salary for a plumber in the US is $29.52, or $61,570/year.
        Average salary for a welder in the US is $23.42, or $48,847/year.

        It's like nobody here can Google anymore.

        If by "here" you meant "your house", you are completely right.

        That no-job requirement for a 300 level course is total bullshit, as you know since you don't bother naming the college or giving any kind of support to the ridiculous claim..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      I would expect this article to not spread misinformation. This isn't a new trend. In January 1993 unemployment for all workers was 48% higher than recent grads, but by January 2003 it was 17%. The gap spiked again after the great recession, but unemployment for recent grads has been the same or higher than all workers since late 2018. Before the pandemic or ChatGPT's release (the main culprits in the article).

      This has little to do with anything on your list. This is the simple result of too many of the jobs

    • Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Monday July 07, 2025 @08:30AM (#65502668)

      Recipe for success?

      1. 1. Make college very expensive
      2. 2. Teach very little, build no usable experience
      3. 3. Make every graduate believe they're worth six figures out of the gate

      I've had significantly better luck hiring people who want to learn on their own, and providing them everything I can to help.

      The "Quick Study" group is what you are talking about. I'm not certain if this is uncommon - it probably is. It takes intense curiosity about a lot of subjects, and deriving endorphin hits from fixing problems, plus a decent memory.

      But it you find one, you scoop them up.

      Where I "retired" from we had EE and ME students doing paid internships, and that was very popular. The students got a lot of practical experience, which turned out to be very valuable for them. Unfortunately, we couldn't take on all those who were interested.

      And pay rate. Yes, there has been an issue since the millennials entered the workforce with recent graduates wanting to start near the top. Don't shoot the messenger folks,

      Today there is the additional issue of GenZ kids bringing in other problems in addition to the demand for top pay.

      And that isn't something I'm making up. A quick search of the web with "GenZ workers getting fired" shows an alarming trend. Problems with poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, bad time management, lack of organization, and having no idea how to dress for work. Look up "office siren". A phenomenon where young ladies dress for the office as if they were going to a club. Especially in the post meetoo era, where men are extremely avoidant of anything that might be distracting or reek of sexualization or objectification in the workplace.

      That's just one example, the males tend to dress way too sloppily, sometimes looking like they are homeless.

      • Problems with poor communication skills, lack of professionalism, bad time management, lack of organization, and having no idea how to dress for work.

        Well what did you expect when you gave them the internet as a babysitter? Actions have consequences, and that particular one is going to be with us for quite awhile. Best get to actually addressing those issues unless you want your business to be inundated with employees of such caliber. (The older "proper" employees won't be around forever.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      1. Make college very expensive

      Most public universities aren't that expensive. UCLA, for example, is $15,700 per year. Is that worth it? Well, let's consider what you get-- UCLA runs on the quarter system (10-week terms plus a week for final exams) and your average student takes 4 classes per quarter at 3 hours per week. That's approx. 396 hours of direct education or examination per year, so if you want to break it down to the simplest cost-per-hour for education, it's $40/hour. Of course, there's much more expense that goes into the ed

  • with at least 15 years experience with OpenAI.....

    • That's ok, they can do all fifteen years in parallel over one year.

    • That's like when.... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ...companies wanted programmers with 10 years of C# programming experience...in 2001.

      • Many moons ago when you applied for a job it was the engineers who looked over the resumes. Today you have to make it past the HR department. It’s especially tough if you don’t have a degree. A good engineer can talk with someone for a few minutes and see if they’re competent or just full of shit. HR won’t pass you along unless you’re that unicorn matching every requirement to a T.

    • Yeah, they all want long years of experience. Job requirements are nothing more than a pipe dream, and they always were. When they really need to hire someone, they'll take somebody that checks off 50% of their wish list items.

  • ... where will you find experienced workers seven years from now? Seems like someone's making a really big bet on AI improving a whole lot soon. And when the next AI winter comes, a lot of people will be paying a lot more for the workforce they need.

    • Re:If you don't hire entry-level workers now... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @11:42PM (#65502176) Homepage

      OK, before we panic, the grad unemployment rate is 6%. That's still very, very low by historic standards. It means that if you're a college grad, you have to stand out more than the bottom 6% of your peers, to get hired. A 94% chance of success still seems pretty darn good to me.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )

        I mean if you're an engineer and you're pushing carts at walmart...you might be employed; but it's not anything your degree helped with. How many of those people aren't included.

        The size of peers vying for the same job just increased...many of those peers stand out from the recent college grads just by the fact they've got experience. Would I hire the recent college graduate or the guy with 15 years experience. They're both willing to work for the same money. I'm going with the guy with the experience. That

        • College grads in many fields have long had to find whatever job they could, even if it wasn't in their field of study. I don't have that statistic, but this article certainly doesn't prove that it's somehow more inflated than before. Most likely, it's inflated by the same percentage as the unemployment rate itself, which is 50% more than general unemployment. Even if that's true, the odds of being unable to find work in your field, is still pretty small, unless you're unwilling to move or make other changes

          • The guy with 15 years experience is NOT looking for the same salary as a college grad. That's not how the market works.

            The guy with 15 years experience who is currently employed or recently unemployed is not looking at jobs with entry-level salaries.

            The guy with 15 years experience in an industry with a declining number of jobs who has been unemployed for 6 months and is staring down a foreclosure and upcoming necessary medical/dental bill is absolutely looking at jobs that pay entry-level salaries.

            That is exactly how the market works. You can't just look at the supply side.

            • That guy with 6 months of unemployment had problems way before the recent downturn in the tech sector. But he's still not going to be going for the same asking rate as the fresh grad.

              In 2020, I lost my job as a manager of a software dev team, due to the strain on the healthcare industry that came with COVID. I needed a job, and like everybody else, I had no idea when the next job would come around. I did what I had to do, reinventing myself as a individual contributor database engineer. With that change, I

              • At zero point did anyone claim this only affects the tech sector, nor was there any mention of 6 figure salaries, you made that up in your head. You took a $30K pay cut, which in most industries would put you at or below entry level wages. The healthcare sector recovered faster after covid than most industries, it definitely wasn't representational of what is happening today.

                Believe what you want, but you are absolutely ignoring reality and your own experience.

      • The unemployment rate was 10.8% when I graduated in 1983. Fortunately, grad school offered a research fellowship which covered tuition, paid the rent, kept food on the table. and allowed me to ride out the Reagan/Volcker recession. But DOGE is killing that option today.

        • I hate DOGE as much as you do, but it's not what's causing our unemployment rates to climb, unless you are a Federal worker. The US workforce is 168 million, in that context, DOGE has (at most) eliminated about 280,000 jobs. That would add about 0.17% to the unemployment rate.

          The recessions in the early 80s had very little to do with Reagan, and much more to do with the Iranian revolution (which affected oil prices) and Paul Volcker's unwillingness to keep interest rates high enough. https://www.investopedi [investopedia.com]

          • I hate DOGE as much as you do, but it's not what's causing our unemployment rates to climb

            Not my point. DOGE has had significant effects on the availability of the research dollars that support grad students. That prevents recent college grads from going to grad school the way I did after my undergrad degree.

            The recessions in the early 80s had very little to do with Reagan, and much more to do with the Iranian revolution (which affected oil prices)

            The Saudi oil embargo and the advent of OPEC had the biggest effect on oil prices in the 70s.

            and Paul Volcker's unwillingness to keep interest rates high enough.

            It was Arthur Burns, Volcker's predecessor, who failed to raise rates on time to quell the inflation of the 1970s. Volcker raised rates to 20% to stop inflation. It did, but caused a nasty recession

            • This article and this discussion, is about the availability of jobs for grads, not the ability of grads to become grad students. Except for certain fields (like yours, or like medicine), grad school isn't really about getting a job. It's about research and teaching. In computer science (my field), a graduate degree rarely leads to a better job, and conversely, I find that programmers with advanced degrees, aren't that great at developing software. They're more about theory than practice.

              You're right, Presid

    • Let my competitor hire them and then I'll hire them from him in seven years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You expect MBA morons to think 7 (!) years into the future? They can barely manage 6 months. On a good day.

  • Its not clear what that statistic means and the reasons for it seem to be pure speculation. It could be students just want higher salaries than are being offered. It could also be that the market for some jobs, like MBA's, has been saturated with more graduates than it can absorb. The problem isn't less hiring, its more people looking for jobs. It could also be that a lot of workers have become discouraged and stopped looking for jobs, but college graduates are still out there trying. In other words its not

  • Rightly or wrongly, this absolutely mirrors what Republicans are saying now. The value of a college degree is degrading and there is a dream to bring masses of labor jobs back to America. The answer is that people stop going to school and just accept that their future lies in a steady 9-5 making iPhones in a factory. Or replacing the hoards of illegal migrants who are due to be deported away from their low paying jobs. Of course none of those Republican politicians, lobbyists, lawyers or their corporate fri

    • Re:This is the vision for the future (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @11:23PM (#65502150)

      Almost. The value of a four year degree in any majors is degrading. Community college and skilled trades are doing well. I didn't see a single AI or robot at work when the local town was putting in new water tower.

      Not a single AI or robot was helping when the Well #3 pump failed and the operators had to replace it. Certified Water Operator is a real thing by the way and legally required in all Group A water systems. A four year degree is not needed for that.

      The pruning crew in the orchards around me were entirely human as well.

      The AI was bright enough to take the indoor office jobs in the air-conditioning and leave the humans doing the dirty jobs. I think you programmers just may have messed up. :-)

      Is Mike Rowe hiding somewhere laughing his ass off?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by KalvinB ( 205500 )

        Don't worry, the skilled trades will be devalued as well. They already are.

        Companies just don't want to pay proper wages and will make every lame excuse they can to justify it.

        Most people who work full time struggle just to pay rent.

      • Is Mike Rowe hiding somewhere laughing his ass off?

        He's probably golfing, practicing ballet, and giving donations to his alma mater.

        If he's laughing it's at all the working class schlubs.

    • People on the right are NOT saying there's no value in ANY college degrees and that people need to be prevented from going to college and get forced into menial labor jobs. NOBODY is saying that. It's apparently the product of your fevered imagination.

      What people on the right HAVE been arguing is multiple related things that are bit more complex than you can apparently handle.

      1. Obama's federal takeover of college loans was a BAD idea and implemented VERY BADLY. He effectively made it so any kid could borro

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by dunkelfalke ( 91624 )

        WHY do YOU PEOPLE tend to WRITE like THIS? I generally see this style of writing in media that caters to uneducated numbnuts, e.g. far right rags like the British daily express.

  • Why don't they start the next SpaceX or Microsoft?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Mom's not working at IBM and unable to arrange a lucrative deal, pap not owning a gem mine might be a part of the reasons.

  • Does anyone have a source for the non-degree holding unemployment rate being 6.9? That's a very interesting piece of the puzzle.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      I wouldn't hold my breath, because this entire article is rubbish. This isn't some new phenomenon. Unemployment for recent college graduates and for all workers have been neck and neck since 2014, and unemployment for recent grads has been slightly higher almost every month from late 2018 to mid 2022, when it started to grow noticeably higher than all worker unemployment. This isn't because of a post-pandemic cooling off period or AI, it is a trend that started in the 1990s with a hiccup just after the grea

  • "College for everyone" is failing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hambone142 ( 2551854 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @11:22PM (#65502148)

    Too many graduates, not enough jobs. People going into debt for worthless fluff degrees but even the STEM degrees have a surplus now.
    All of that when the trades have a shortage of trained people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Too many jobs require a degree, and the automated systems won't even let you apply if you don't tick that box.

      Companies complained that they needed skilled workers for the modern economy, but they don't want to pay for them, and they definitely don't want to train them. A degree isn't supposed to make you fully competent to do some specific job, it's supposed to give you the foundation and skills to learn the job.

      Now we have AI too, with bosses figuring they can just churn out AI slop and have some experien

      • It's a combination of artificially-high requirements, talent surplus, work shortage, and far too much efficiency. The only thing people will accept is greater taxes on billionaires and wealth redistribution in the form of UBI.
    • I think there were enough graduates, but Mao Tse Trump killed all the academic jobs.
    • Yes, and there are way, way too many people with JDs that cannot support themselves by practicing law.
    • What did you expect when they made "College Degree" a box to be checked off rather than an exemplar? Eventually the number of potential employees with degrees was going to outstrip employer demand for them, and that happening causes the value of a degree to plummet to near zero. Now it's reaching saturation, and those with them have found out their actual worth long after having promised to pay for them.

      Care to guess what's going to happen next?

      All of those trades suffering shortages are suddenly going t

  • So, a 6% unemployment rate means that, if you want to get hired, you have to stand out more than the bottom 6% of candidates. I'll take those odds any day!

    • That's not at all what it means. 4.1% unemployment rate is the U-3 unemployment. The U-6 unemployment rate is 8.1%. https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]. The U-3 rate was invented by the Government to make what ever assclown is in office to look better by ignoring those who gave up, have been unemployed too long, and those who work a couple days a week out of their field, but still looking. Either way, the unemployment is not your probability of getting a job in your field out of college. That is called

      • So yes, each unemployment rate metric has a different purpose, each of which is legitimate and not invented to make politicians look good.

        Let's take your lowest percentage, 83%. That still means that you only have to beat out the bottom 17% of graduates, to get a job IN YOUR FIELD. I emphasize this because the placement rate wouldn't include those who got jobs outside of their chosen field, artificially lowering the percentage.

        As for companies ignoring everybody but the top 10%, that doesn't jibe with your

    • A good point, but it also means your wage will be slightly lower than if the employer didn't have as much alternatives to hire.

      • This is true. Essentially, you're saying the job market is no longer white-hot, and that wages will be less than stellar. That's a lot different from being depressed.

    • No, totally wrong. The oft quoted US unemployment rate is a total lie. It doesn't count people who have quit looking and it doesn't fairly count those who are unemployed or underemployed. It's a bragging metric that looks at "the economy" with very rose tinted glasses.

      • I'd like to see stats based on 100% of able-bodied, not-on-mat/pat leave, working-age, non-incarcerated people wanting to work, and then measuring the percentage of a standard work week per capita.

        Total hours being worked divided by total available labour-hours.

        • You should also exclude spouses who choose to stay home with the kids, and caregivers.

          The broadest measure of unemployment, U-6, is at 7.7%, still a healthy number. But focusing on this number incorrectly negatively skews high, when the context is the difficulty of finding work.

      • There are 6 different unemployment rates tracked by the BLS, each has a different purpose and shows unemployment through a different prism. That doesn't make any one of them a "lie"--you just have to understand the nuances and the context.

        Whichever nuanced metric you prefer, the number of unemployed people in the US is very small. And there are valid arguments to exclude people who aren't looking for work. You know, couples who start having children will make a conscious decision for one spouse to stay home

  • There's a housing crisis isn't there? Homes are no longer within affordable range for young people. So why can't we use these unemployed graduates to build housing? The new medicaid law says you have to work 80 hours a month to be eligible for medicaid .. so why shouldn't we couple that with an employment guarantee? Offer people work building new housing developments, elderly care, city street cleaning, and critical national infrastructure. Pay low wages but cover medical and basic meals on the job. Offer o

  • Always gonna be sick people.
  • It encumbers with un-dischargeable debt and withholds health insurance without obedient sacrifice to the corporate wage slavery that is regularly canceled without explanation or a shred of stability.

    This is why knowledge workers need 0. unions and 1. employee-owned co-ops to ensure their fair recompense and economic stability.

  • Once again more evidence to suggest were in the final few years of this civilisation. Everything is going according to plan.

  • I wonder if it's because they all don't know how to read, write, pay attention, budget, or have social skills. That might be why I'm personally not hiring these people at my job.

  • Wait for it (Score:3)

    by whitelabrat ( 469237 ) on Monday July 07, 2025 @09:03AM (#65502746)

    All these college grads who can't find jobs will in many cases start their own businesses. We've seen this cycle happen in the past. Except they will be leaner and more effective by leveraging AI/ML from the start and will operate without all the corporate baggage of C-suite staff with bloated salaries.

    Even with great AI tools, you need competent people who can use them, and I'd suggest the young folks are going to have an advantage there. The companies that compete in the race to the bottom are sacrificing long term growth for short term gains in the name of making a quick buck.

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