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New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years (deccanherald.com) 84

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The Class of 2025 is encountering the worst entry-level job market in years with unemployment among recent degree-holders aged 22 to 27 reaching 5.8% this spring -- the highest level in approximately four years and well above the national average. According to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, 85% of the unemployment rate increase since mid-2023 stems from new labor market entrants struggling to find work.

Corporate hiring freezes implemented under threats of President Trump's tariffs, combined with AI replacing traditional entry-level positions, have severely constrained opportunities for new graduates. More than 60% of executives surveyed on LinkedIn indicate that AI will eventually assume tasks currently assigned to entry-level employees, particularly mundane and manual roles.

The impact varies significantly by major, with computer engineering graduates -- once highly sought-after -- now facing a 7.5% unemployment rate, the third-highest among recent graduates. Employment in computer science and mathematical jobs for those under 27 has dropped 8% since 2022, even as it grew 0.8% for older workers.

New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years More | Reply

New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years

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  • At least in tech, there's a new wave of outsourcing going on since the R&D tax credits ended a couple years ago, but it doesn't get talked about as much as the "AI stealing jobs" hype machine.

    • Re:outsourcing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @10:57AM (#65440061)

      Indeed. Also, vote Dumb! and get economic problems.

    • Although outsourcing is definitely a thing, a lot of companies are just not hiring, even at the expense of shipping new products. Do not discount enshittification and stagnation. Why build a new thing, when you can put lipstick on the old thing.

    • Re:outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @11:49AM (#65440165) Journal

      Also, there's a lot of talent out there due to recent massive layoffs in tech. When hiring, are you going to take a recent grad, or someone who's been doing the work for 5+ years?

      This is the long tail of layoffs that happened 6+ months ago.

      • Indeed. Layoffs that were prompted by the long period of high interest rates, which in turn were imposed as a response to hyperinflation, which itself was largely a result of everything that happened during the pandemic.

        So, the contributing factors listed in the summary are not wrong, but are also very incomplete, as quite a lot has transpired to bring about the current state.

        All of these factors will change over time, though the rate of change and the consequences of change will differ.

        • Don't forget that before the pandemic, the US was suffering a bad labor shortages where it was very difficult to find people.

          With the pandemic layoffs and company closures along with remote work allowing for a larger talent pool. Companies went on hiring sprees and there was free money available.

          Now budgets are shrinking, and companies are right sizing.

    • What I'm seeing is that as the boomers retire they're being replaced by Indians and sometimes Eastern Europeans. They get as many H-1B visas as they can and then what they can't get for work local visas becomes an overseas worker whether that works well or not.

      So the boomers are finally retiring or just plain getting too old to work and they aren't opening up any positions. So the new generation is just screwed.

      There is still a massive massive massive automation push. Whether it's AI or not every CF

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      At least in tech, there's a new wave of outsourcing going on since the R&D tax credits ended a couple years ago, but it doesn't get talked about as much as the "AI stealing jobs" hype machine.

      R&D tax credits did not end. The way they are accounted was changed. IIRC, instead of being able to claim 100% of the credit in year one, you claim 20% of the credit in each of five years. This is a rolling period, so after a five year adjustment period, the credit is essentially a wash.

      • Right, so you pay $10M in programmer salaries, make $5M in revenue, and have to pay tax on your $3M in profit. Kinda puts a wet blanket on things. And every time you grow you go through the same thing -- expenses now, taxes now, deductions later.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

          Right, so you pay $10M in programmer salaries, make $5M in revenue, and have to pay tax on your $3M in profit. Kinda puts a wet blanket on things. And every time you grow you go through the same thing -- expenses now, taxes now, deductions later.

          Sure. But that's a one time issue, and after five years your carried forward deductions add back up to 100%. The change was just a short term revenue boost for the government, not anything that affected anyone long term.

  • Seems like everywhere I go, fast food joints and convenience stores are desperate for people and paying $15 plus per hour.

    • That should tell you something about the state of affairs. No one wants to deal with the public for $15 an hour. It's so bad that red states are rolling back child labor laws. https://abcnews.go.com/US/desp... [go.com]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        What it tells me is that $15/hour probably isn't enough to pay the rent and buy groceries.

        • Re:Lots of jobs (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @01:47PM (#65440455)

          What it tells me is that $15/hour probably isn't enough to pay the rent and buy groceries.

          No it really isn't enough. Once upon a time, minimum wage work was like something High school kids and students just getting started did. Or maybe someone wanting to make a little extra money did.

          Now, people are trying to use it as a career path. Get a job at McDonald's, work there for 30 years while raising a family, and making enough for a middle class life.

          I'm not here to judge if that is a good or bad thing, just that the paradigm changed.

        • It is if you get two such jobs, and move somewhere cheap.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

        That should tell you something about the state of affairs. No one wants to deal with the public for $15 an hour. It's so bad that red states are rolling back child labor laws. https://abcnews.go.com/US/desp... [go.com]

        I'll help you with that one. The main subject of the story was hired (as a 16 year old) to do hazardous work in violation of the law. He didn't do the work because laws allowed him to. The hiring company broke the law and had numerous other employment violations. Sounds like a company that needs to be shut down, but it isn't a trend.

        Additionally, the article continuously mentions that "states have introduced legislation to weaken child protective labor laws". The closest it gets to mentioning any laws pas

        • Additionally, the article continuously mentions that "states have introduced legislation to weaken child protective labor laws". The closest it gets to mentioning any laws passed is this non-sense:

          https://www.wvlegislature.gov/... [wvlegislature.gov]

          https://www.flhouse.gov/Sectio... [flhouse.gov]

          • Re:Lots of jobs (Score:4, Informative)

            by GoTeam ( 5042081 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @12:57PM (#65440365)
            You didn't read those, did you? The one in Florida was to remove some restrictions for 16 & 17 year olds. I agree that the person who filed it seems to have done so in bad faith. Stating that removing some employment restrictions because the kid's parents "know best" is a green light for abuse by employers. However, the bill failed in the senate.

            The West Virginia bill which will likely become law soon is to apply the same standards to 14 & 15 year old employment as is available in many states already. It does not remove a prohibition on total work hours allowed at that age or the type of work allowed. It just removes the "work permit" process. The work permit was formality that helped nothing. Federal law still exists and is not violated [dol.gov]. My daughter is 14 and works 5 hours a week at an ice cream shop. It's been allowed in my state without a permit as long as I can remember. I myself worked in a pet store at that age.

            I will fully agree that the Florida bill got too close to passage. Thankfully the Florida state senate killed it, but that doesn't mean it can't be abused in the future since 16 & 17 year olds have fewer federal protections than 14 & 15 year olds do. Federal law still prevents the hazardous employment for minors, and that won't change. Any state that passes such laws will be challenged in federal court. That would be terrible optics for the folks responsible.

      • Fuck off with this "wants to" bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

        by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @12:05PM (#65440223)

        No one wants to deal with the public for $15 an hour.

        CORRECTION: No one can afford to pay their rent for $15/h. There's no job anyone wouldn't do for the right amount of money. So "wants to" us pure fucking bullshit and fuck off. They're not choosing not to work that job. They're finding higher paying ones because they cannot fucking afford to live off that amount of money. Your way of stating it makes it sound like they're lazy when they're actually being responsible. If you paid enough money, anyone would do any job they were physically able to.

        You're repeating Chamber of Commerce propaganda....oooh, we need to import migrants and pay them slave wages because those fat lazy Americans "don't want to" work the jobs we're offering....fuck off...If someone can't fill a job, they're not paying enough...plain and simple. That's how Supply and Demand works...it's just lazy entitled business pricks think they should be able to hire whoever they want at whatever wage they desire...typically quite exploitive ones and then throw around this propaganda to get echoed on Fox News.

        I don't go around saying Apple "doesn't want to" sell me a new iPhone for $10. The market dictates the price of goods...it dictates the price of labor as well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        I think the child labor laws are mostly because they have kicked out so many of the illegal immigrants they were having problems staffing. Some of them had just turned to prison labor but crime keeps going down so they don't have enough of those either.

        I suspect what we are going to see is petty crimes getting years or decades in jail in order to keep the prison labor camps fed. I can tell you that I am already seeing a large uptick in police arresting people at random because they don't have enough act
        • This post is a bunch of bullshit.
          • Well you sure showed me...

            Also behold the legendary +2 troll moderation. It won't last long so enjoy it while you can. It means mods are arguing over my post. Every time they do ultimately somebody has to begrudgingly admit I'm right...

            I would love to be proven wrong about America's use of slave labor but so far I have not and we're going on 250 years...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by wed128 ( 722152 )
      People with CS degrees don't want to work at fast food joints and convenience stores

      • They will if they need to pay rent and eat. However, if there are no work requirements for able-bodied people to receive subsidies, they might just take the subsidies. It's almost like Congress should address this issue.

  • CS discipline is (Score:2, Informative)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 )
    one of these areas that's susceptible to boom-bust cycles, just by it's nature. Aerospace engineering, law, construction, some areas of finance - they tend to be the same. Areas like mechanical engineering, nursing, medicine, a lot of manufacturing, and some types of service jobs all fall into the "very stable" category.

    People in fields susceptible to downturns must plan for a feast/famine environment. 3 years ago, CS grads were being mobbed by 6-figure job offers like a zombie horde attack. Now it's fam

    • One solution is to go to grad school and hope the job market is better in two years when you get your MS.

      • That's very high risk though. If you go straight from your undergrad degree to grad school then you can wind up in a quantum superposition of unemployment.

        Basically nobody wants to hire you because they know you're just trying to get some experience and will quickly move on. You're too qualified for the jobs that are willing to hire somebody with no experience but you don't have any experience so the other type of job won't hire you.

        You really do need to work a few years before you hit grad school b

    • one of these areas that's susceptible to boom-bust cycles, just by it's nature.

      I graduated into the dot-com bust and still managed to land a job. It wasn't for the same pay as head hunters were quoting me months before, and it was 1000 miles away, but it was a start.

      • You hint at a good point.

        People need to be prepared to move to where the job is. Motherfuckers who insist on only taking a job where they happen to be or where they "want" to live get no sympathy.

        I've moved across the country where I didn't know a soul twice. So has my wife. I've also moved 400 miles away to a place where I didn't know a soul.

        Fucking move to where the job is!

    • 3 years ago, CS grads were being mobbed by 6-figure job offers like a zombie horde attack. Now it's famine time. I'm partly sympathetic and partly not.

      Chasing the curve never works out well. Starting a multi-year education process because there is a demand for trained workers NOW! is not a good plan. Odds are the need will be filled before you are ready.

      Educate for a career path, not for a particular job. Be enough of a generalist that you can pivot with the market and do what needs to be done; over time you will develop a long list of skills and demonstrate an ability to learn new skills as needed.

      Few of us turn out to be the top specialists in any gi

  • Experienced Experts (Score:4)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @11:29AM (#65440125)

    While we supposedly hand entry level jobs off to AI, and hire outsourced resources to fill mid-tier roles, I keep asking myself the same question: Where are the experienced experts going to come from in a few years? You don't become an experienced expert while sitting on the sidelines waiting for entry level jobs to become available. You become an experienced expert by entering those entry level jobs and slogging in the trenches for a few years, learning not just the job skills, but also the domain expertise and business sense needed to show upper management than you're more than just a code monkey, but a valuable resource to the company itself. And while I know that's frowned upon in some circles because management would rather see every person as an easily replaceable cog, there are times where domain expertise in whatever business you happen to be working in really is necessary to tackle more complex problems: the type of problems where you need to program a solution that's business specific.

    Where are these experts going to come from in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years? Are we really counting on AI "learning" how to become those experts? Or are we thinking that outsources resources, those that have been used as easily replaceable cogs for decades now, are going to replace those experts? Business leaders are making a lot of assumptions about where things are going to go if they think they can replace entry level workers with AI today and not face consequences somewhere down the line. Granted, they've been playing that same game since the days of mass-scale outsourcing started, and it seems that every time it bites them in the ass it turns into another round of layoffs and then hiring more outsourced resources.

    Are we going to pass into an age where "experienced expert" no longer holds any weight at all? Because however fervently the management wishes it, you aren't going to be able to pull the older folks back in on a whim when they retire. And there won't be any experienced folks waiting to jump in to take their place as all the entry level jobs have been automated away or handed to outsourced folks.

    In short: Where are the experts of tomorrow going to come from? Experience isn't developed in a vacuum.

    • Who put the idea in your head that you had to be given a job? Was it the same person who told you that only huge corporations have a use for CS grads? There's still work out there, go find it. It may not be the soulless corporate grind you were hoping for but I assure you that you'll adapt.

    • Where are these experts going to come from in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years? Are we really counting on AI "learning" how to become those experts?

      Yes. In five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, AI will look nothing like it does now. Look how much progress has been made in the last three years!

  • 5 years ago, when universities dropped SAT and entry exams requirements, people warned that it would lower the quality of graduates and create employment problems. Looks like they were right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Sorry, but this isn't evidence about the quality of the graduates. If they're just out of school you can't tell whether they're good or bad. I trained an astrologer to be a good programmer in less than a year. (Well, he soon moved into management, but he was capable.) HR hired a different astrologer, who was skilled at C. More skilled in the techniques than I was. But he was in love with macros, and used them everywhere, so nobody else could understand his code. It was the second one that had a high

      • I trained an astrologer to be a good programmer in less than a year. (Well, he soon moved into management, but he was capable.) HR hired a different astrologer, who was skilled at C.

        I guess the real problem for new CS grads is that astrologers are taking all the entry-level positions. On the plus side, it bodes well for the industry if people that can predict the future are trying to get into it.

      • Is astrologer a euphemism? Seems odd to have two of them at the same company unless you're in a city where astrologers are popular or something.

  • For those just starting off their careers, even a short period without work can have long-term effects. Someone who experiences six months of unemployment at age 22 can expect to earn about $22,000 less over the next decade...

    This may be confusing cause and effect. Whatever makes companies reluctant to hire a candidate may also make that candidate a poorer employee, leeading to less money.

    Of course, this could also lead to a death-spiral: gaps in work history make companies less likely to hire, so it's hard

  • With fewer bellbottoms and more expensive housing.

    • That's a good comparison. MAGA would absolutely crucify Reagan for any his policies today. In 1984 Reagan offered amnesty to people in the country illegally. In 2025 we're calling in the national guard and marines to round people up.

      • That's a good comparison. MAGA would absolutely crucify Reagan for any his policies today. In 1984 Reagan offered amnesty to people in the country illegally. In 2025 we're calling in the national guard and marines to round people up.
        Yeah, there was a second part to Reagan's amnesty, which was supposed to reduce the need for performing a second amnesty decades later, we did not do that and now here we are. Funny that. Almost like most problems don't solve themselves if you merely kick the can down the road.

      • Yeah. Someone should have shot Regan for his amnesty bullshit.

  • More confirmation that this is where we are.

  • So, 94.2% have landed jobs? (Score:3)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @02:13PM (#65440509) Homepage

    It's all perspective. Noting that the unemployment rate is 5.8%, or that it's the worst in four years, sounds awful. But taking the other perspective, the "worst in four years" means that 5 years ago, it was *worse*. We somehow made it through that time, and we'll make it through this one.

    Personally, I'd be pretty happy with a 94.2% chance of success.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      It's all perspective. Noting that the unemployment rate is 5.8%, or that it's the worst in four years, sounds awful. But taking the other perspective, the "worst in four years" means that 5 years ago, it was *worse*. We somehow made it through that time, and we'll make it through this one.

      Personally, I'd be pretty happy with a 94.2% chance of success.

      5 years ago was the end of Trump I and before the start of the pandemic... We are only 6 months in to Trump II: This time it's forever and things will get a lot worse.

    • Personally, I'd be pretty happy with a 94.2% chance of success.

      Well sure; however, let's look at the implications with simple numbers: Assuming a group of 1 million people and not having success means slavery or death, then a 94.2% chance translates into 58 thousand people per year doomed to suffering and death. Now, odds are, you won't be one of those 58,000, so why worry about them?

      For myself, I am NOT happy with a 94.2% chance of success. I guess we will agree to disagree.

      • Thankfully, your awful scenario is not the one that faces college grads in the real world. Nobody in the US is facing starvation and death because they graduated from college and can't find the job of their dreams. If your skills and education are so undesirable, or your effort is so pitiful, that you can't beat out 5.8% of candidates, then you should seriously consider a different line of work. Or you could do what a lot of other hapless college grads do, and live with their parents for a while until they

  • Expect to do work you aren't thrilled about.
    Expect to have to demonstrate you can do the next job before you are given it.
    Expect to have to demonstrate a commitment to the success of the company.
    Expect to do things not specifically in your employment contract.
    Accept that politics matter and they aren't necessarily evil or toxic.
    Save complaining for really egregious circumstances.
    Don't get upset when a company fails to pander to your delicate sensibilities.
    Don't attempt to draw fixed borders during an interv

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      Hey gen Xer here. Fuck all that nonsense. Companies have absolutely no loyalty or care for you, so you owe them none either. I'd only go above and beyond if you have a solid contract that guarantees lifetime employment and a pension, but they stopped handing out those jobs before I was born. You can be as committed as you want to "the success of the company" or work extra hours outside your employment contract, and swallow all the complaints you want, and the company will say "thanks", give you nothing,

      • You may have missed my point with reference to the topic. This is about getting and remaining employed.

        Yeah, it's great to have a counterculture, and people who buck the system are necessary. But those doing the bucking are not owed a living.

  • You spent thousands of dollars for a degree that is worthless, but, those TRADE JOBS are still out there. I see signs at plants all the time with sign up bonus, good pay etc. But, that means you'd have to get your hands dirty LOL.

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