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Unemployment: Young Adults and College Graduates
Unemployment rate of people aged 20 to 24, and of people 25 and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher, monthly, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
BLS Current Population Survey, seasonally adjusted. Not smoothed, so single months move more than in the NY Fed series.
The official unemployment rates of young adults and of experienced degree holders, side by side. A slowdown lands far harder on people starting out than on graduates already in careers, and the distance between the lines shows how hard.
What this chart reads
- U.S. Unemployment Rate · Ages 20–24as “Ages 20 to 24”latest 2026-09-01
- U.S. Unemployment Rate · Bachelor's Degree and Higher, 25+as “Bachelor’s degree or higher, 25 and over”latest 2026-09-01
Sources
U.S. Unemployment Rate · Ages 20–24. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, series LNS14000036 ("Unemployment Rate - 20-24 Yrs."). Palanor pulls it from the FRED API (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) nightly. Bureau of Labor Statistics data are in the public domain.
U.S. Unemployment Rate · Bachelor's Degree and Higher, 25+. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, series LNS14027662 ("Unemployment Rate - Bachelor's Degree and Higher, 25 Yrs. & over"). Palanor pulls it from the FRED API (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) nightly. Bureau of Labor Statistics data are in the public domain.
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.