Young United States college graduates face employment crisis
Over two years, Rebecca Atkins filed more than 250 job applications, and felt like everyone was going into a gaping chasm—one opened by the highest unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the United States in more than a decade.
'It was extremely dispiriting,' said the 25-year-old, who graduated in 2022 with a degree in law and justice from a university in the US capital Washington.
'I was convinced that I was a terrible person, and terrible at working.' At 5.8 percent, unemployment for young, recent graduates from US universities is higher than it has been since November 2013, excluding 15 months in the COVID pandemic, according to official data.
Moreover, it has also remained stubbornly higher than overall unemployment—an extremely unusual situation, analysts say. And while overall US unemployment has stabilized between around 3.5 and 4 percent post-pandemic, unemployment for recent college graduates is only trending higher.
The labor market for new grads has weakened consistently since 2022, with new hiring down 16 percent in 2025, year-over-year, according to payroll firm Gusto.
Analysts say the trend is likely a result of cyclical post-pandemic hiring slowdowns—particularly in new-grad-heavy sectors like technology, finance, and business information—and overall economic uncertainty in the tumultuous early days of the Trump administration.
That is scant consolation to the droves of young people—often saddled with huge amounts of student debt—on the hunt for their first full-time job.
'All of the jobs that I wanted, I didn't have the requirements for—often entry-level jobs would require you to have four or five years of experience,' said Atkins, who bounced between part-time roles and working in restaurants for years.
'It is definitely an outlier,' said Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics. 'You'd expect that the white collar positions would not be as exposed to cyclical downturns (as other jobs).'
Job openings for professional and business services have declined by more than 40 percent since 2021, according to research authored by Martin, with tech sector jobs disproportionately impacted. 'Part of that is a slower pace of hiring as they right-size after they hired at very high rates in 2022.
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