College graduates are starting their careers in one of the worst job markets in years.
According to data from the Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 9.7% as of September 2025, the same rate as for 20- to 24-year-olds with only a high school diploma. Economic uncertainty and advances in AI are causing companies to reduce entry-level hiring, according to a study by education technology company Cengage Group.
Despite the bad market, recent graduates are adjusting their expectations and finding their footing and landing jobs faster than previous classes, according to ZipRecruiter’s 2026 Graduation Report.
According to the report, 77% of 2025 college graduates said they were employed within three months of receiving their degree. This is a significant increase from the previous year, when 63% of 2024 graduates said they found a job within three months of leaving school.
The Class of 2025 is most likely to have entered the workforce immediately out of college with majors in agricultural and environmental science, nursing, history or philosophy, or education.
Overall, ZipRecruiter’s data suggests that new graduates are working harder to land fewer opportunities, with 16% of students submitting more than 20 applications before landing one job offer, compared to 12% of the Class of 2024, and fewer students reporting receiving multiple offers before landing a role.
“Young people and recent graduates are increasingly adapting to the realities of this job market,” which has fewer opportunities than during the post-pandemic recovery, Nicole Bashaw, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told CNBC Make It.
Meanwhile, more students are taking their first offer, even if it doesn’t line up with what they consider their “dream career,” as a stepping stone or even a “filler job” to cover expenses while they continue their search, ZipRecruiter says.
Approximately one in five graduates who find employment say they are more than qualified for their current position, and a similar proportion say they intentionally applied at a level below their level to gain a foothold. As of December 2025, nearly 43% of U.S. college graduates ages 22 to 27 were underemployed, meaning they were working in jobs that didn’t require a degree, according to data from the New York Fed.
While ZipRecruiter’s report covers how the Class of 2025 has fared in the job market since leaving school, Bashaw said it also provides a glimpse into what the Class of 2026 will be facing when they receive their diplomas in the coming weeks.
“Today’s graduates are more pragmatic and are taking a job rather than waiting for a bigger and better job to come along, even if it’s not necessarily the best or appropriate job for their career prospects,” she says.
Half of graduates are concerned that AI will affect their jobs and careers
According to a report from ZipRecruiter, nearly half of 2025 graduates say AI is already impacting hiring in their field, and a similar percentage of 2026 graduates say they think AI will reduce the number of entry-level roles available to them.
According to the report, students working in health and human services have little concern that AI will impact their work. Those who believe that AI has led to fewer jobs in their field focus on communications and media. computer science, information technology, or data science. and finance, accounting, and economics.
According to a ZipRecruiter report, students say they don’t receive enough training in AI skills while in school. Only 29% of recent graduates and 23% of recent graduates said their school offered “extensive AI training” for their future careers.
The report also shows gender disparities, with female graduates less likely than men to say that AI training is integrated into their curriculum, and more likely to say that the coursework focuses on covering AI risks rather than learning practical skill sets.
Beyond concerns about AI, nearly 10% of the Class of 2026 said they changed their major during their studies due to economic circumstances. ZipRecruiter reported large differences in the percentage of students who said they wanted to study nursing, health, medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry, but they did not.
Some companies are increasing recruitment of interns and new graduates.
One bright spot for current students is that despite concerns that AI is eliminating entry-level jobs, ZipRecruiter has seen a 32% year-over-year increase in internship postings, primarily in white-collar fields.
Employers say they expect to hire nearly 4% more interns and 5.6% more new graduates in 2026 compared to last year’s hiring rates, according to new data from the National Association of College and University Executives (NACE). As of March, more than a third of employers surveyed said they planned to hire additional employees this year, up from about a quarter who expected an increase in their workforce when the survey was completed in the fall.
Companies planning to expand hiring are focused on information, engineering services, wholesale trade, construction and professional services, NACE said.
Reprioritizing early career pipelines that include learning AI skills could pay off in the future, Bachaud says. As companies understand what processes and tasks can be automated, leaders need to understand “what requires humans,” and then how to “build expertise for human judgment within specialized roles,” she says.
“There needs to be some kind of vehicle or pipeline to develop early talent,” Bashaw said. “If there is a complete lack of focus on entry-level talent, 20 years from now there will be no one to fill those jobs.”
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