About That College Grad Who Can’t Find a Job…
· 59 min · S2 E19
Episode About That College Grad Who Can’t Find a Job…
(Originally aired 7/1/2025) Newly minted college graduates are having a harder time landing that first job than in recent years. Is it AI? Is college useless? Is it a crisis? (No. No. And not yet…) College graduates under 27 still have significantly lower unemployment rates (5.8%) than high school graduates of the same age (6.9%). What economist Kathryn Edwards finds worrying is that these new workers, who are typically a lagging economic indicator, may in this case be a bellwether of a weakening economy.
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Read More:
• The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates [New York Fed, 2025] • Hires, from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey [St. Louis Fed, 2025] • Downskilling: changes in employer skill requirements over the business cycle [Labour Economics 2016] • Upskilling: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Workers Are Plentiful? [The Review of Economics and Statistics 2020]
Links in the notes 10
- https://optimisteconomy.substack.com/
- https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy
- https://optimisteconomy.substack.com/p/podcast
- https://www.tiktok.com/@optimist_economy
- https://www.youtube.com/@optimist_economy
- https://www.instagram.com/optimist_economy/
- https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:unemployment
- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSHIR
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537116300240
- https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/102/4/793/96774/Upskilling-Do-Employers-Demand-Greater-Skill-When?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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