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Recent College Graduates vs. All Workers: Unemployment
Unemployment rate of recent college graduates and of all workers, monthly, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
Continuation isn't available for Recent graduates (22 to 27): Last observation was 144 days ago — too stale to project.
Continuation isn't available for All workers (16 to 65): Last observation was 144 days ago — too stale to project.
NY Fed, from the Current Population Survey: seasonally adjusted, three-month moving average, people enrolled in school excluded. Recent graduates are aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher. October 2025 is estimated by the NY Fed.
For most of the last three decades a new degree meant a lower chance of being out of work than the average worker. The lines show when that stopped being true: recent graduates have been more likely to be unemployed than the workforce as a whole since the early 2020s.
What this chart reads
- U.S. Recent College Graduates · Unemployment Rateas “Recent graduates (22 to 27)”behindlatest 2026-06-01
- U.S. All Workers 16–65 · Unemployment Rate (NY Fed)as “All workers (16 to 65)”behindlatest 2026-06-01
Sources
U.S. Recent College Graduates · Unemployment Rate. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates (newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market), from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey (IPUMS). © Federal Reserve Bank of New York; content subject to the Terms of Use at newyorkfed.org. Updated quarterly (generally February, May, August and November); Palanor checks monthly.
U.S. All Workers 16–65 · Unemployment Rate (NY Fed). Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates (newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market), from the Current Population Survey (IPUMS). © Federal Reserve Bank of New York; content subject to the Terms of Use at newyorkfed.org. Updated quarterly; Palanor checks monthly.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.