Americans with four-year college degrees now represent a record share of total U.S. unemployment, signaling a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring and a worsening job market for recent graduates.
According to newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for adults aged 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree rose to 2.8% in September 2025, up 0.5 percentage points from the previous year. No other educational attainment group saw a comparable increase during the same period.
In total, more than 1.9 million college-educated Americans were unemployed in September. This marks the first time since the BLS began tracking the metric in 1992 that college graduates have comprised 25% of the nation’s unemployed workers—a historically high proportion that reflects both slowing hiring and a nationwide glut of degree holders competing for fewer professional roles.
Economists warn that the trend is linked to deeper structural shifts in the U.S. labor market. Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said the surge “should further fuel AI-related job loss fears,” pointing to automation’s accelerating impact on administrative, professional, and entry-level analytical positions.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams, speaking in Santiago, Chile, described the current cohort of graduates as facing “a bit of a perfect storm.” In a typical labor cycle, he noted, new graduates “are being swept into the labor market as they get out of college,” but that pattern has broken down this year.
The data also coincide with a wave of high-profile layoff announcements from major corporations—including Amazon, Target, and Starbucks—which have trimmed thousands of jobs across corporate, tech, and retail-management roles.
Before 2025, the share of unemployed workers with at least a bachelor’s degree had never reached this level, underscoring the challenges facing a generation encouraged to pursue higher education as the safest path to economic stability. The new numbers suggest that, for many, the labor market reality is falling far short of that promise.
Sources
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Bloomberg News reporting on September 2025 unemployment data
Remarks by Michael Feroli, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Remarks by John Williams, President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Corporate layoff announcements from Amazon, Target, and Starbucks
1-
ReplyDeleteWhen someone says that "science has become a religion," they mean, in the same tone, that "whoever believes that Marxism is science has more faith than a Christian (this anti-communist lie is easy to debunk, but unfortunately there are many neo-positivist communists who believe in this lie)." To believe that current science under Neoliberalism is 100% neutral/impartial/unbiased/without ideology, etc., the same for scientific evidence, the scientific method, etc., you need to have much more faith than a Christian, perhaps even more than the most fundamentalist Christians who believe that the rapture will happen at any moment. Neopositivism and scientism (both are practically the same thing, but it's good to use both terms) are indeed based on faith and belief, because to completely reject the spectrum theory of science (science as a spectrum) and hold a binary (practically Manichean) view of science, believing that science and pseudoscience are determined by "giving quick and momentary results (without considering the clear long term or any other factors)," you have to possess the same level of faith and belief as a Christian who believes the rapture will happen at any moment. Nowadays, evidence can indeed be fabricated, manipulated, tailored, and commissioned, just as all facts and things are cherry-pickable. But unfortunately, most people aren't ready for this discussion.
2-
Regarding the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, well, I would say that in practice what exists is the Spectrum Theory of Intelligence, where intelligence, like the G factor, is a spectrum instead of black and white. Basically, intelligence is multidimensional, with n dimensions. Just like science, technology, progress, culture, politics, economics, and practically everything else. Ahaiyuta's theories of general and special frequencies show very well how this works in practice; everything is frequency, and everything has its own frequency or set of frequencies. This is similar to Nyx Land's theory of Spiritual-Metaphysical Materialism and the Theory of Dynamic-Complex Systems. Even though most people aren't ready for this conversation, it's good to talk about it.
3-
Regarding the issue of democracy, what are your thoughts on Council Democracy and Neighborhood Assembly Democracy? I advocate for the implementation of a Council and Neighborhood Assembly democracy model in Brazil, as well as in all countries of the world, which is a communal and community-based model of society. Although I agree with Nyx Land, Ahaiyuta, and Myalin regarding Transhumanism, Posthumanism, Left Accelerationism, Cosmic Escapism, and the like, what is the world if not formed by neighborhoods and communities? The Theory of Imaginary Nations and Imaginary States proves very well how the neighborhood/community is the fundamental unit of all human societies, as Murray Bookchin already stated.
4-
Well, I think at this point we can say that neoliberal capitalism has indeed failed as a political and economic system, considering how it is normalizing the return of slavery and the extreme precarization of work and education. Neoliberalism is an authoritarian and totalitarian ideology in practice. Nowadays we can say that bourgeois liberal democracy is as democratic as national socialism is socialist. Perhaps if we have 3.5% of Western dissidents united in all Western countries, we can certainly make the Western Spring a reality in practice.