New college grads face a tougher job market — again

Pessimism runs high in the class of 2025 after entry-level hiring prospects have tightened for two years straight and a student debt crackdown begins.

This year’s new college graduates are heading into a tougher job market than last year’s — who had it worse off than the class before that — just as the Trump administration cracks down on student loan repayments.

Recent grads’ unemployment rate was 5.8% as of March, up from 4.6% a year earlier, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported last week. The share of new graduates working jobs that don’t require their degrees — a situation known as “underemployment” — hit 41.2% in March, rising from 40.6% that same month in 2024.

“Right now things are pretty frozen,” Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said of entry-level prospects. “A lot of employers and job seekers are both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do.”

Employers and job seekers are both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do.

Allison Shrivastava, economist, Indeed Hiring Lab