In the United States, 42% of graduates aged 22 to 27 were working in jobs that typically did not require a bachelor’s degree in June, while their unemployment rate reached 5.7%, compared with 4.1% for all workers. Since January 2021, these young graduates have been more likely to be unemployed than the average worker every month, with the gap reaching a record 1.8 percentage points in April 2025. According to “elite overproduction” theorist Peter Turchin, the excessive number of degrees relative to available jobs fuels sociopolitical instability, a pattern reflected in youth protests in Nepal, India and France. In the United States, unemployment among workers aged 20 to 24 stood at 7.1%, compared with 3.6% for those aged 25 to 54, while a Census Bureau study found that greater exposure to artificial intelligence lowered the odds of landing a first job by 5 percentage points and earnings by 13% for recent graduates.
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