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One of the core myths sustaining American higher education in recent decades is that college is more than an intellectual indulgence—it’s a guaranteed on-ramp to the workforce. Universities have marketed this promise with ruthless efficiency: pay the tuition, earn the credential, acquire the skills, and step into a stable, dignified career. That pipeline, which has been cracking for years, is now breaking in earnest, with the numbers turning decisively against recent graduates.

Official figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York pegged the unemployment rate for recent college graduates at 4.9 percent in June 2025. By September, however, some measures showed rates approaching levels not seen since the Great Recession, with youth unemployment—ages 20 to 24 with bachelor’s degrees—hitting 9.7 percent.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics—take your pick. But even under the most generous interpretation of the data, the job market is clearly rough for recent graduates.

More telling than any statistic is the desperation in the messages flooding my phone. Over recent weeks, graduates from around the country have texted me to say they’ve been searching for months with nothing to show for it—no interviews, no leads, often not even rejections—asking whether I’ve heard of openings or can point them anywhere at all.

I spoke recently with a Mississippi State graduate who, by any reasonable measure, did everything right. He entered college after graduating as his high school’s salutatorian, earned an engineering degree with a minor in math, and picked up industry experience—credentials that, not long ago, typically meant securing a job before graduation. He didn’t. By the time he finished in early December, he had already submitted hundreds of applications and, since then, has sent out 100 more, only to be met mostly with silence.

How does this square with the White House’s sunny economic narrative? The stock market is booming, we’re told. Growth is robust. So why are freshly minted graduates being treated as disposable? Setting aside whether the economy is actually as strong as we’re being told, no single villain explains what recent graduates are facing; a handful of structural forces appear to be converging.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is unquestionably reshaping entry-level work—and it is doing real damage. Analyses summarized by Econofact point to two related trends: young workers in AI-exposed roles are experiencing steeper employment declines, and data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas show that tens of thousands of 2025 layoffs have been attributed to AI or vaguely defined “technological updates.” On its own, AI explains much of the current strain at the bottom of the labor market. But it is not the whole story.

The disruption is also compounded by a more deliberate dynamic—one that AI conveniently helps obscure. In many cases, automation narratives coexist with, and sometimes mask, the displacement of domestic workers in favor of cheaper foreign labor, particularly through the H-1B visa program in tech. (Read my earlier essay, “Why Are U.S. Lawmakers Lobbying for Foreign Students? IDK, Because Rep. Ross Wouldn’t Tell Me.”)

For years, the H-1B visa has served as a reliable tool for undercutting domestic wages by hiring foreign workers—credentialed, no less, by the American university system. Although there are renewed promises to tighten H-1B restrictions, executives are already signaling how little those promises may matter. In a conversation with Minding the Campus contributor Rob Jenkins, one senior partner at a large U.S. firm openly admitted that corporations will continue to pursue foreign labor—and, if H-1B rules tighten, will simply route hiring through the F-1 student-visa pipeline as a workaround.

More controversially, though not least, there is mounting evidence that young men—especially white men—are bearing the brunt of this contraction more heavily than others. This is not a new concern. Jacob Savage explored it at length in his essay “The Lost Generation,” arguing that white men have been systematically pushed out of high-status professional fields as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) regimes reshaped hiring norms. DEI, whatever its critics hoped, is not receding. Ashlynn Warta, writing for the James G. Martin Center, has documented how DEI offices within higher education have largely survived by rebranding themselves despite political and legal pressure. Outside the university, many companies have gone further still, explicitly reaffirming their commitments to DEI in the workforce—making it increasingly plausible that men, especially white men, will face a tougher job market than any other demographic. The data is already bearing this out: men with a college degree now have roughly the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college. And, as Fortune reports, while roughly seven percent of college-educated men are unemployed, the figure for women is closer to four percent.

For this generation of graduates, sustained joblessness is likely to translate into a more hardened skepticism toward higher education—and other institutions. Even before unemployment climbed to its current levels, Gen Z was already expressing outright regret about attending college. As job prospects tighten—and wage garnishment for defaulted federal student loans resumes—that ambivalence is unlikely to dissipate.

I don’t pretend to know what the year ahead will bring. Labor markets turn. Politics intervenes. But for now, the education-to-workforce pipeline looks more fragile than it’s ever been. And, to borrow an obvious observation, “That’s not good.”

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