America’s newest college graduates were sold the college premium. Four in 10 of them are working jobs that never needed the diploma.
About 42% of recent college graduates, ages 22 to 27, were underemployed in June, working jobs that typically don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s tracker of the labor market for recent college graduates. That’s up from 41.8% in May but down from 42.4% in November 2025 and below the pandemic-era high of 43.4% in October 2020.
