A fresh college degree used to come with a quiet edge in the job market. New grads had better odds of landing work than the average worker, and that edge held for as long as anyone tracked it. Not anymore. They now face higher unemployment than the workforce as a whole, and the gap is the widest on record.
What makes this strange is the timing. The reversal did not start with ChatGPT, and it did not start with the pandemic. It started in early 2019, before either one was on the radar.
The chart tracks a single number, a recent grad’s unemployment rate minus the rate for all workers. Below the zero line grads come out ahead of the typical worker, and above it they fall behind.
The comparison is worth pinning down. “All workers” is the whole U.S. labor force, and most of them are older and more experienced than a new graduate, so a fresh grad starts at a natural disadvantage. For decades the degree more than canceled that disadvantage out. Now it does not.
American Buddhist Net 