It’s unclear whether these kinds of layoffs are enough to register in the economic data, though there are signs it is. Writing in the Atlantic this week, business journalist and abundist Derek Thompson points to an alarming phenomenon in the job market: The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is unusually high—and historically high in relation to the general unemployment rate. Why might that be? One theory: Firms are hiring fewer grads into white collar jobs, and using more AI. “When you think from first principles about what generative AI can do, and what jobs it can replace, it’s the kind of things that young college grads have done,” as the Harvard economist David Deming told Thompson.

Young grads are typically among the easiest to employ; they’re skilled, ambitious, and will work for cheap. Yet the recent grad-gap—the “difference between the unemployment of young college graduates and the overall labor force”—is higher than it’s been in four decades. Thompson points to the following graph, made with data from the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

-see the article for the graph-

Here’s Thompson:

And while jobs in some sectors, including construction, manufacturing and trade and transportation grew slightly, larger losses in the service-providing industries including education, professional services, and finance spurred negative job growth for the first time since March 2023, according to ADP’s data.