Americans with four-year college degrees now comprise a record 25% of total unemployment, underscoring a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring this year.
Government-shutdown delayed monthly figures published Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree-holders rose to 2.8% in September, up a half-percentage point from a year earlier. Other levels of education, by contrast, registered little or no increase over the same period.
There were more than 1.9 million Americans aged 25 and over with at least a bachelor’s degree who were unemployed in September — 1 in 4 of the total number of unemployed. Before 2025, the ratio never reached such a high in data going back to 1992. Younger, recent college grads have also been struggling to find work.
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