The college job market offers a warning sign to the US labor market

On paper, the job market looks like it’s hardly ever been better. But the unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree recipients aged 20 to 29 is above 12%.

It’s almost laughable at this point when Bryn Savidge gets a job rejection email. “It’s like they’re all using the same AI algorithm to say, ‘Write this person a rejection letter,’” said Savidge, who graduated from Kenyon College, a small liberal arts college 50 miles from Columbus, Ohio, with a major in environmental science. A classic refrain is “We can tell you really want to change the world, but we’ve gone for more qualified candidates,” she said. “They always add an environmental quip.” After applying to over 100 jobs at environmental consulting firms, law firms, nonprofit organizations and think tanks since last fall, Savidge hasn’t received a single full-time offer. But she is relieved to have at least secured a summer internship at an environmental science publication. On paper, the job market looks like it’s hardly ever been better. The unemployment rate has stayed under 4% for more than two years, the longest stretch of time since the early 1960s. And there are more than 8 million jobs, which exceeds the number of openings before the pandemic. But zooming in on the job market for recent college graduates paints the economy in a much less rosy light. The unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree recipients aged 20 to 29 is above 12%, an almost four percentage point increase from a year ago, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That essentially means applicants like Savidge are competing with more people for the same position compared to a year, said Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas. “While securing that first job tends to be challenging, it is especially hard now given the slowdown in the labor market over the last two years,” he said.