The unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 hit 5.6% at the end of last year, well above the overall rate of 4.2%, and more than 40% of employed young graduates are working jobs that don't typically require a degree. Career centers across the country are reporting fewer employers showing up to spring recruiting events, and students are applying to hundreds of jobs with little to show for it.
The primary culprit isn't AI, at least not yet. Economists point to a "low hire, low fire" labor market in which job openings have trended down while layoffs remain low, creating a broad hiring stasis that hits first-time job seekers hardest.
The slowdown has been concentrated in industries that typically absorb young graduates, including tech, media, accounting and consulting.
A longer-term demographic shift is also a factor: older workers are staying in white-collar jobs longer, creating congestion that reduces movement up the job ladder and cuts demand for entry-level replacements.
AI is adding anxiety to an already difficult situation.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted the technology could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, and a Stanford study found employment declines for early-career workers in AI-exposed fields.
Read more via The New York Times
The U.S. issued roughly 250,000 fewer visas in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, an 11% drop, as travel bans, expanded vetting requirements, paused student visa interviews, and State Department staffing cuts combined to slow the flow of legal immigrants into the country. For the first time in at least half a century, more immigrants left the U.S. than entered last year.
International student visas fell more than 30%, exchange visitor visas dropped by nearly 30,000, and visas for workers and certain family members also declined significantly. India and China bore the largest share of the reductions.
The slowdown is already affecting the labor market. Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted last week that weaker job creation in recent months is partly tied to lower immigration, and economists warn the effects on innovation and productivity could be long-lasting.
Business and tourism visas fell nearly 3.4%, a drop of roughly 200,000, raising concerns about the U.S.'s competitiveness as a destination for international business and talent.
Supporters of the restrictions argue they protect American workers and wages. Critics say the policies create uncertainty for businesses, families, and workers who have been waiting years or decades to enter the country legally.
Read more via The Washington Post
Worker productivity grew at a 1.8% annualized rate in the fourth quarter, a steeper downward revision than economists expected and well below the 5.2% pace in Q3. The revision pushed unit labor costs sharply higher, raising fresh questions about the path back to the Fed's 2% inflation target.
Unit labor costs, the price of labor per unit of output, grew at a 4.4% rate last quarter, revised up significantly from an initial estimate of 2.8%. Economists say that pace is too fast to be consistent with stable inflation over time.
Hourly compensation rose at a 6.3% rate, also revised upward, though economists note that strong productivity growth has so far absorbed much of that increase, limiting the inflationary impact.
The longer-term productivity trend remains solid: productivity grew 2.1% for all of 2025 and has grown at a 2.1% rate since the end of 2019.
Economists expect AI adoption to give productivity a boost going forward, which could help keep labor costs in check even as wages rise.
Read more via Reuters
After losing roughly 34,000 jobs in 2025, the U.S. tech workforce is projected to grow by nearly 185,500 positions this year, a 1.9% increase that would bring the total tech labor force to just under 9.8 million workers, according to CompTIA's annual State of the Tech Workforce report.
Over the next decade, tech occupation employment is expected to grow at roughly twice the rate of overall U.S. employment, with data scientists and analysts (420%), cybersecurity professionals (346%) and software developers (188%) leading the way.
AI skills are showing up across nearly every sector: more than 275,000 active job postings in January 2026 referenced AI skills, spanning both dedicated AI roles and positions requiring workers to use AI tools as part of their broader job.
The seven sectors accounting for nearly three quarters of AI skills hiring are technology, professional services, finance, manufacturing, administrative services, retail and healthcare.
Texas is projected to lead all states in new tech jobs added this year (+32,238), followed by California, Florida, New York and Washington.
Read more via CompTIA
Policy changes related to DEI and immigration have hit businesses harder than any other regulatory shift over the past year, with large employers feeling the effects most acutely, according to a new survey by Littler's Workplace Policy Institute.
Highlights from the survey of more than 300 HR professionals, in-house lawyers, and C-suite executives:
71% of respondents said DEI policy changes impacted their business, and 63% said immigration policies created workforce staffing challenges, up from 58% who anticipated such challenges a year ago. Some employers responded by reducing or eliminating H-1B visa sponsorships entirely.
35% of respondents said their organizations made workforce reductions as a result of regulatory and economic uncertainty, and 30% paused or reduced hiring. Manufacturing was hit hardest, with more than 40% reporting both reductions and hiring freezes.
State and local regulation is filling the federal void: nearly 9 in 10 employers said they were impacted by state and local legislative changes over the past year, with paid leave (67%), pay equity and transparency (51%), data privacy (47%), and AI use in hiring (41%) cited most often.
Read more via Littler
A new Indeed Flex survey of 1,000 retirees in the U.S. and U.K. finds that nearly one in three are either working or open to returning to work, with most preferring fewer than 20 hours per week. Three quarters say their view of retirement has changed in the past five years.
63% of retirees cite rising cost of living as their primary reason for returning to work, and 32% say their savings are insufficient. American retirees are feeling the financial pressure more acutely than their U.K. counterparts (67% vs. 54%).
It's not purely about money: 52% say they miss social interaction, 39% miss feeling productive, and 46% describe their motivation as a mix of financial necessity and personal choice.
Retail is the top industry of interest (33%), followed by freelance and consulting (30%) and hospitality (23%).
Women are more likely than men to cite cost of living as their primary driver (69% vs. 53%) and show greater interest in retail and hospitality roles.
Read more via Indeed Flex
The National Association for Law Placement's annual law firm diversity report includes data from 47 fewer firms than last year, resulting in demographic information on 31,000 fewer lawyers, a 29% decline. NALP attributed the drop directly to the Trump administration's crackdown on DEI efforts.
Large firms, those with more than 700 lawyers, accounted for a disproportionate share of the missing data, even though they tend to have the highest levels of racial and gender diversity.
With the caveat that the dataset is smaller, the data that was submitted shows racial diversity at law firms declined across nearly all categories in 2025. The proportion of summer associates of color fell 5.5 percentage points to 37.5%, the lowest level since 2020 and a sharp drop from a record high of 43.7% in 2024.
The Trump administration has kept up pressure on law firms through multiple channels, including EEOC data demands, FTC warnings about hiring practices, and executive orders targeting firms over their DEI programs and past legal work.
Right now, with the administration's stance on anything related to DEI, there's a big concern about putting out public demographic information and even collecting that demographic information."
Hungary: Job seekers in Hungary are finding work significantly faster than a year ago, with the average job search dropping from just over five months to under four months, according to a new survey by job portal Profession.hu. The share of job seekers who were unemployed when they started looking rose from 53% to 61%, while employers are increasingly focused on narrowing candidate pools earlier in the hiring process. Salary and benefits remain the top priority for workers evaluating new roles, cited by 84% of respondents. (Budapest Business Journal)
Japan: Japanese companies have agreed to raise wages by more than 5% for a third consecutive year, with Rengo, the country's largest labor union group, reporting an average wage hike of 5.26% in preliminary results from annual labor negotiations. Major employers including Toyota, Hitachi and NEC agreed to meet union demands in full, as competition for workers remains intense. Final figures typically come in slightly lower as smaller companies, which tend to offer more modest increases, report their results later in the process. (Reuters)
United Kingdom: Mental health is now one of the top reasons UK workers call in sick, with nearly a third of employers citing stress, anxiety or depression as a commonly reported cause of absence, according to a new government survey. The findings come ahead of a significant change to UK sick pay rules taking effect April 6, when workers will become eligible for statutory sick pay on their first day of illness rather than their fourth, and the minimum earnings requirement will be removed. (SIA)
