Recent-graduate unemployment rate (NY Fed)

Unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 22–27 with a bachelor's degree, from the New York Fed's labour-market tracker.

Why it matters. The macro counterpart of the entry-level canaries signal; if AI is closing the door on new graduates, it shows here first among official series.

Proxy types

welfare

Unit

share

Cadence

quarterly

Valve

adoption to adaptation

• series nyfed.us_recent_grads.unemployment_rate.pt
• source The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates · default tier 4 · Public domain (U.S. Federal Reserve)

Elevated for the cycle but inside the historical range; not separable from the wider hiring slowdown.

1 observations. Hollow points are disputed (see counterevidence). Every point links to its observation.

NY Fed, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, 2026:Q2: unemployment rate for recent graduates about 5.6%, underemployment 42%. Inside the normal band (<=6%), at the top of the 2010s range. Initial seed.

• 2026-06-30 us_recent_grads · 5.6%as of 2026-06-30

1. 2026-09-10○unmeasured →to ●consistent with normalconf — → 75 · claude-initial-seed

   NY Fed, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, 2026:Q2: unemployment rate for recent graduates about 5.6%, underemployment 42%. Inside the normal band (<=6%), at the top of the 2010s range. Initial seed.

   obs:5ff73e8c

75 / 95 — good evidence, some ambiguity

Confidence is independent of status: 90–95 multiple strong independent sources; 70–89 good evidence, some ambiguity; 50–69 mixed or hard to operationalise; below 50 limited or vague.

• Entry-level employment shortfall in AI-exposed occupations ◐emerging
• Bottlenecks #41 (Narayanan & Kapoor's list)
• Crosswalk: Adaptation ⇄ Labour & consumers (same valve)