For 66 months in a row, recent college graduates have been unemployed at a higher rate than the average worker. From January 1990 to August 2001, that did not happen in a single month.
And nobody had to be fired to build that streak. The layoff rate was 1.0% in August 2026, below the 2019 average of 1.21%.
The door into a career didn’t slam. It stopped opening as often.
The math, run forward:
A company can shrink through two doors: let people out (a layoff), or stop letting people in (a hiring freeze). The first is loud and lands on people already inside. The second is quiet, and it can only reach someone who doesn’t work there yet.
In 2019, graduates (22 to 27, bachelor’s or more) averaged 3.92% unemployment, about a third of a point above everyone else. In the first half of 2026, the gap was 1.45 points. The New York Fed put the rate at about 5.6% in the second quarter.
The BLS hiring rate was 3.87 per 100 workers in 2019 and 3.3 in August 2026: 14.7% fewer hires per worker. It was this low only from 2008 to 2013 and in April 2020.
The diploma still pays. The median recent graduate working full time earned $61,584 in 2024; a high school graduate the same age, $41,056. That is 1.5 times, the same ratio as in 2019. What changed is the head start.
Three suspects, each with real research behind it, and none with a confession. Stanford’s payroll data finds employment for 22 to 25 year olds in the jobs most exposed to A.I. is 19% below peers, and calls it early and descriptive. A New York Fed team estimates remote work explains 64% of the rise in young-graduate unemployment. The Burning Glass Institute describes leaner teams and risk-averse hiring. Another New York Fed team says job postings make it hard to blame A.I. alone.
All three work the same way: through the hire that never gets made. And the easiest hire not to make is the first one.
The video also covers the one group of graduates who walked into the same market and mostly got through. Nursing: about 13% underemployed, against 39% across all majors, and a $70,000 median starting salary against $58,000. Computer science: 6.99% unemployment, 1.66 times the average.
No advice here. No tips, no recommendations. Just the numbers, and where each one is published. The full source list is in the video description.
— The Cost of Living
Book mentioned in this channel: The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel — https://amzn.to/47KvNx3
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