U.S. Recent College Graduates · Unemployment Rate

## What this measures

The unemployment rate of recent college graduates: people aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree or higher who are not enrolled in school. Monthly from January 1990, seasonally adjusted and smoothed by the New York Fed with a three-month moving average.

## Why it matters

New graduates are the people a slowdown in hiring hits first: they have no job to keep, only one to find. Their rate is the most direct read on the entry-level labor market for degree holders, and it is the series behind most of the reporting on whether AI is closing off first jobs.

## How to read it

Read it against the all-worker rate (labor.nyfed.all_workers.unemployment_rate) and the gap between them (labor.nyfed.recent_grads.unemployment_gap). For most of the record recent graduates were less likely than the average worker to be unemployed; in the June 2026 data they were more likely, and had been every month since January 2021. Compare also with all college graduates (labor.nyfed.college_grads.unemployment_rate), who are older and more settled.

## What it does not say

It says nothing about why graduates are out of work: a weak hiring market, longer job searches by choice and changes in which fields people study all move it. The sample of 22- to 27-year-old graduates in the survey is small, which is why the NY Fed smooths it. October 2025 is estimated by the NY Fed because the survey was not collected that month. The NY Fed revises the history when it updates.

## 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.