Bad Time to Be a Grad

Additional Resources

• Companies Predict 2026 Will Be the Worst College Grad Job Market in Five Years

Transcript

Pete Newsome: 0:00

Happy Friday, everyone. On today’s episode of Cornering the Job Market, I’m going to focus on just one area, and that’s this. It’s a bad time to be a new college grad. The Wall Street Journal reported that the class of 2026 is heading into the weakest job market in five years. I agree with them, and there’s plenty of data to back that up. There’s a new employer survey that shows the lowest confidence level since the first year of COVID. The unemployment rate for recent grads hit 4.8% in June, which is not only higher than the overall unemployment rate, it’s the highest that it’s been for young professionals in more than four years.

0:34

Full-time job postings are down more than 16% year over year according to Handshake, while applications per job are up 26%. And more than 60% of 2026 grads say they feel pessimistic about their career prospects. And then there are the layoffs. You’ve seen the announcements. They’ve been almost nonstop all year. Amazon, UPS, Microsoft, Dell. And just yesterday it was reported that Verizon is planning to cut 15,000 jobs, and that would be the largest reduction in their entire company history. And what happens with these layoffs, you now have experienced workers competing against inexperienced talent for the same jobs, for entry-level jobs. New grads shouldn’t have to face that, but they are right now.

1:16

And you can’t really blame the companies. I mean, it makes sense that they want to hire people who can hit the ground running versus those they’d have to train from scratch. And if that’s not bad enough from a competition standpoint, it is, but we now have AI added to the mix where you see executives being very bold in their statements saying that they’re intentionally trying to replace entry-level work with AI agents. This is happening constantly now, too. And there’s a couple other factors at work here. In 1992, the 25 and up labor force was about 50-50 degreed versus not. It’s now 69% degreed versus 31% not. And that may not sound too bad, but when you consider that 60% of all open jobs don’t require a college degree, it just shows how clearly supply has outpaced demand in that area when it comes to jobs requiring a college degree.

2:11

There just aren’t that many relative to the supply on the market. And look, it’s not all bad. There’s still job growth in certain areas, like healthcare, education, manufacturing, but we’re not paying close enough attention to that, in my opinion. And so for parents or high school and college counselors, those who are guiding young people in their educational pursuits really need to pay attention to this data and what’s happening in the market because going to college now just isn’t enough. Having a generic degree isn’t enough. And I don’t care whether it’s a liberal arts or humanities degree.

2:47

Those get lots of grief all the time, right? As far as their value in the market. But I’m talking business degrees too. The demand just isn’t there. My two cents is this: don’t go to college without a specific purpose. And most importantly, gain a clear understanding up front of what doors will be opened with your degree or not. And then consider whether it’s good to invest four years of your life in the associated cost of earning that degree versus taking a potentially different path, an entirely different path. And what I’m saying is college isn’t, it shouldn’t be the answer by default that it historically has been.

3:24

And look, I could talk about this all day. I won’t do that. But here’s the bottom line: it is gloomy right now, and it’s not just something I live with professionally as a staffing company owner. I’m a father of four. My youngest is 17. He’s starting college next year. He’s going with a purpose. My oldest is 25. She’s a young professional in the workplace. And then I have two in between. This is something I deal with every day, professionally as well as personally. And unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet if you already are in this situation. You’re already knee deep in college, you are a recent grad, but don’t give up hope.

3:59

I’m not suggesting you do that at all. What I am saying is you’re going to have to be more assertive than you probably thought you would need to be. You’re going to have to be creative in your job search. And those who are can have success. I truly believe that. I see it every day. And there’s plenty of content available that on that. So if you are someone who’s struggling and trying to figure out how you just feel lost with your job search, send me a message on that. I’ll point you to some uh some great content on that you could hopefully apply right away. I’m happy to do that. So there’s the message for today. It’s not great if you’re a new college grad, but again, don’t give up hope completely.

4:36

There are still opportunities out there in companies hiring. So that’s where we are today. So before we go, here’s a fun fact for today. On November 14th in 1989, flight attendants celebrated the signing into law of a smoking ban on all U.S. domestic flights. 1989. That’s the year I graduated from high school. Doesn’t seem that long ago to me, maybe to some of you, but that’s crazy to think that you could still smoke on an airplane back then. I mean, what an offensive thing to everyone who doesn’t smoke or didn’t smoke back then. That seems so bizarre.

5:08

It’s almost impossible to comprehend that that was going on not too long ago. But there we are. Glad that has changed. Look, not everything is better than it used to be. There were, they are the good old days. But that one, definitely a big improvement. We don’t want to go back to that. So thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who you think might be interested. And as always, I look forward to your feedback. Talk to you next week.