Recent college graduates are struggling to secure employment despite extensive job searching efforts. Irene Chang, who earned her industrial and systems engineering degree in May from Georgia Tech, has submitted approximately 450 applications since last September with minimal interview success. Similarly, Jacqueline Kline, who completed her master’s degree in communications this past spring from Florida State University, has applied to over 500 entry-level positions since last December. Both attribute their challenges partly to artificial intelligence.
According to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, the unemployment rate for recent graduates aged 22 to 27 with bachelor’s degrees or higher stood at 5.7% as of June, exceeding the overall worker unemployment rate of 4.1%. A ZipRecruiter survey found that 47% of recent graduates this year believed AI had already affected hiring in their fields.
However, economists present competing explanations for the entry-level employment slowdown. Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson found that early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles experienced a 16% relative employment decline since late 2022, when large language models became prevalent. He attributes this partly to AI systems’ capacity to perform codified knowledge tasks that align with entry-level positions, and notes that junior roles typically face deeper cuts during economic contractions.
Other economists dispute AI as the primary factor. Harvard economist David Deming points to the timing of the junior hiring decline, which preceded ChatGPT’s release by approximately six months, suggesting remote work policies play a larger role. New York Fed analysis corroborated this view, finding remote work more influential than AI in rising unemployment among younger college graduates, since training remote entry-level workers requires greater investment.
University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum presented additional evidence questioning AI’s primary role. An examination of over 21,000 U.S. firms from early 2021 to early 2026 revealed that companies making substantial AI investments actually increased entry-level hiring by 12% in the two years following AI adoption, contradicting the displacement hypothesis.
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