Jobs for new college graduates are expected to increase only modestly over last year, by about 1.6 percent, as employers continue to proceed cautiously in the face of concerning economic signals.
John Rosen, a business professor at the University of New Haven, said the numbers in the report are “presumably worrisome to students who are about to graduate.” And it’s not something that bodes well for the perceived value of the four-year college degree.
Still, “nobody should be panicking” just yet, he said.
“It would be wrong to take one data point, and say, ‘See, I told you all the colleges are going to be broke by Thanksgiving,’” Rosen said. “If it continues — two points make a line, three points make a trend — then I would be getting a little concerned.”
Job prospects for recent graduates have been uneven for the past two years, according to the report. After a strong post-pandemic rebound, hiring dipped by 5.8 percent in the spring of 2024. Early projections in the fall of 2024 (for the class of 2025) were positive, but the updated spring numbers rose by just 0.6 percent.
While most firms conduct their college recruiting in the fall, more employers are shifting hiring to the spring as they navigate the economic uncertainty, the report noted.
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Employers expect to recruit 63 percent of their full-time new graduate hires this fall, with the rest to be completed in the spring. Before the pandemic, that fall hiring figure often stood at nearly 75 percent.
Rosen described it as a “wait-and-see” approach, as businesses cautiously deal with the effects of tariffs and the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.
“It’s a very easy thing for employers, for senior people, to say, ‘Yeah, let’s, let’s just put this one off six months and see how the tariffs are going to play out, see if the whole job is going to be replaced by AI,’” he said. “Usually, not much happens in the real world, and then they have an ‘Oh, we’ve gotta hire’ moment six months later.”
Approximately 60 percent of employers expect to maintain the same level of hires as last year, according to the report. Roughly 14 percent of employers said they would cut hiring, with a majority of those citing economic uncertainty as a factor, as well as a “reduction in business needs/projects.”
The report found that industries like finance and consulting are among those increasing hiring. Industries that reported decreasing hiring for college graduates include pharmaceutical manufacturing, transportation, and wholesale.
“The sophisticated way to look at all this data is what kinds of jobs are being heavily recruited and what kinds of jobs are in surplus,” Rosen said.
Any changes now, however, may be little consolation to incoming graduates.
“They’ve already made their decision,” he said. “They picked their major four years ago.”
Employers reported that about 10 percent of entry-level jobs include artificial intelligence in their job descriptions. A quarter of respondents said they were unsure whether they would replace certain entry-level jobs with AI, while another 14 percent said they were actively “having discussions” about it.
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A majority said replacing entry-level jobs with AI is off the table for now.
“There have been layoffs in a lot of high-tech businesses, but I think that’s largely because they overhired during the recovery from the pandemic,” said Alan Clayton-Matthews, professor emeritus of economics at Northeastern University. “We’ll have to wait longer to see the effect of AI on on hiring. But you would think that AI would also require people to use it, and those trained to use it, I think, would benefit from a college education.”
In a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on Monday, researchers found that college-educated workers are facing similar unemployment prospects as those with a high school education. Though college graduates still have better job prospects, the unemployment gap between them and high school graduates has narrowed from around 5 percentage points to 2.5 percentage points as of July 2025.
Researchers found that the rate of college graduates landing jobs between the ages of 22 and 27 has been in gradual decline since 2000, but has accelerated over the past 20 months.
They also said that while recent graduates may be having a harder time finding jobs than before, those with a college education “maintain advantages compared with high school graduates in job stability and compensation once hired.”
According to the most recent jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the jobless rate stands at 4.4 percent, compared to 4.1 percent at the same time last year.
Of the 7.6 million people unemployed, 813,000 were “new entrants” to the workforce, looking for their first job. That figure was down from 985,000 in July, but was still higher than any other month since August 2016.
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The September jobs report was released nearly two months late because of the government shutdown, and labor market data for October will only be partially released in tandem with November’s data.
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.