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https://financialpost.com/fp-work/americans-with-degrees-unemployed-workers

Thursday's labour figures showed young Americans are bearing the brunt of the recent rise in joblessness

Americans with four-year college degrees now comprise a record 25 per cent of total unemployment, underscoring a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring this year.

Government-shutdown delayed monthly figures published Thursday by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate for bachelor's degree-holders rose to 2.8 per cent in September, up a half-percentage point from a year earlier. Other levels of education, by contrast, registered little or no increase over the same period.

There were more than 1.9 million Americans aged 25 and over with at least a bachelor's degree who were unemployed in September — one in four of the total number of unemployed. Before 2025, the ratio never reached such a high in data going back to 1992. Younger, recent college grads have also been struggling to find work.

Rising unemployment among the college-educated "should further fuel AI-related job loss fears," Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Thursday in a note following the release.

The milestone comes amid a raft of high-profile layoff announcements from major corporations including Amazon.com, Target Corp. and Starbucks Corp. A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas indicated job-cut announcements last month were the highest for any October in more than 20 years, fuelled by plans to replace positions with artificial intelligence.

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