College students about to graduate are entering a challenging labor market. As a result, many will be trading in their caps for a crash course in health care, student loans and cash flow.
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CEO Larry Fink said at the firm’s summit in March that this year’s graduates could experience the highest jobless rate in years, due in part to artificial intelligence making more entry-level roles obsolete.
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates swelled to roughly 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The overall unemployment rate during that time was closer to 4.2%.
“For young people early in their career, unemployment can be particularly harsh,” said Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit that focuses on the country’s safety net. “They have had less time to pull together a reasonable amount of emergency savings and are far more likely to carry college debt.”
