Even though the unemployment rate is low for Americans, it’s much higher than usual for new college graduates due to the growing decline of available entry-level jobs.
That’s according to a new analysis by CNN reporter Matt Egan, who said Monday that there are “concerning signs” for those entering the job market just beneath the headlines. CNN host Boris Sanchez began the segment by asking Egan why “jobs are increasingly out of reach” and why the U.S. is seeing “the worst job market for grads in years” despite the “overall job market looking pretty good.”
“Unemployment is low. Wages are up. Job growth has been relentless,” Egan said, before pointing to a chart comparing the unemployment for college graduates in 2022 vs. 2025. Data from the New York Fed showed that the unemployment rate for new graduates three years ago was just 3.9%, whereas the class of 20205 is facing an unemployment rate of 5.8%.
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“That is a big move, much bigger than the rest of the jobs market. And the problem is that entry level hiring is down, especially in the tech world, where a lot of people in college had been hoping to work,” Egan said. “… For the longest time, the recent graduates had a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the market. But that situation has completely reversed. And for the first time since 1980, we have a situation where the unemployment rate for recent graduates is higher than the rest of the the jobs market.”
Egan then cited the example of 24 year-old Orlando, Florida resident Gabriel Nash, who told the network he had applied for approximately 450 jobs since graduating last year with no luck. And he mentioned that artificial intelligence (AI) is also to blame for a lot of entry-level jobs in the computer science and math fields being eliminated. While employment those industries for workers older than 27 years old has gone up by roughly one percentage point, employment for workers aged 22 to 27 — the typical age of recent college graduates – is down by %
Dario Amodei, who is the CEO of AI company Anthropic, told CNN that the trend of AI replacing inexperienced workers is likely only going to increase in the coming years.
“A couple of years ago, you could say that AI models were maybe as good as a smart high school student. I would say that now they’re as good as a smart college student, and sort of reaching past that,” he said. “I really worry, particularly at the entry level, that the AI models are very much at the center of what what an entry-level human worker would do. What is striking to me about this AI boom is that it’s bigger and it’s broader, and it’s moving faster than anything has before.”
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Watch the full segment below, or by clicking this link.
– YouTubewww.youtube.com
