AI was supposed to hit new grads hard. So far, unemployment data says otherwise.

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Last month, we shared word of a Stanford University study that found entry-level employment in so-called “AI-impacted” occupations lagging well behind that in other fields. Now, a new working paper from economics researchers at Munich’s CESifo finds the opposite, arguing point blank that “there is no evidence of any significant, widespread displacement or reduction in hiring of recent college graduates in absolute or relative levels.”
In “The Early Impacts of AI on Employment Among Recent College Graduates,” researchers Robert Fairlie and Jane Wu said they decided to focus on recent graduates “because changes in labor demand may first appear through reductions in hiring.” As AI gets good enough to at least perform the “relatively standardized tasks” in many entry-level office jobs, they argue, firms could reduce new hiring for simpler roles rather than laying off more experienced long-term employees.
There’s some reason to believe 2026’s graduating job seekers might be more at risk of AI displacement than those graduating just a year or two prior. The CESifo researchers point to a recent sharp increase in the number of firms “replacing a large number of employee tasks with AI” in a Census survey, as well as broad increases in AI spending per employee and ChatGPT Enterprise token use in the last 12 months.
Anecdotally, some major names also think that this is the year AI is finally capable enough to start replacing the jobs of some recent graduates. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said earlier this year that “AI literally until December [2025] was not actually good enough to do any of the jobs that they’re actually cutting.” And BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in March that “the speed at which AI is changing” led him to worry that “when this year’s college graduates enter the workforce, we could see the highest unemployment rate among them in years—even without a recession.”
Nothing to see here (yet)
To determine if those kinds of worries were valid, the CESifo researchers looked at detailed microdata from the US Census’ Current Population Survey to determine unemployment trends among recent college graduates (i.e., Bachelor’s degree recipients 22 to 25 years old who aren’t pursuing higher degrees). Since these unemployment numbers predictably spike as fresh graduates enter the job market in the summer months, the researchers looked at year-over-year and seasonal trends going back to 2022 (which is both the year employment returned to pre-pandemic levels and the year ChatGPT was released).

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