Is using AI in college bad?
Some students argue that using AI in universities is ready for the workforce. Where is the line?
Don’t blame the slowdown in the job market, which many economists say will only reveal the uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump’s tariffs in their May employment report on Friday.
You can also point your finger at the AI.
According to economists and staffing agencies, AI, or artificial intelligence, is urging technology companies to hire recent university graduates and fire more employees.
A recent report from Oxford Economics shows that unemployment rates in the US over the past few years can be partially fixed in adoption of technology adoption that has primarily impacted recent university graduates.
Oxford senior economist Matthew Martin said Trump’s tariffs, which are expected to rekindle inflation while attenuating consumer spending, are likely to intensify job drag.
“Obviously something’s changing,” Martin said. “Entry-level jobs have declined significantly.”
What is the job market today?
According to an economist surveyed by Bloomberg, the Labor Bureau on Friday plans to report that in May it averaged between 181,000 and 125,000 jobs in the past two months. The unemployment rate is predicted to be stable at a historically low 4.2%.
Even as companies are plagued by high labor costs and interest rates and narrowing down profits, employment growth has gradually slowed over the past few years as the post-demand explosion of demand declined. Trump’s tariffs are creating new uncertainty that forecasters say will further reduce job growth in the coming months.
However, Martin also said the focus should be on deeper changes in adoption patterns that have been taking place over the past few years and have attracted strength.
What is the unemployment rate among university graduates these days?
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the recent unemployment rate among university graduates from April 2022 to March 2025 has skyrocketed from 3.9% to 5.8% from 2.9% to 5.8%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In other words, the unemployment rate among graduates today is higher than all workers, reversing decades of trends.
The unemployment rate for all university graduates (2.7% in March) is still lower than the overall unemployment rate.
But many entry-level high-tech jobs have disappeared, according to an Oxford study. Within the industry, professional, scientific and technical services have seen the biggest increase in employment among recent graduates over the past 20 years, primarily in computer services. However, IT employment for people ages 22 to 27 has fallen by 8% since 2022, compared to a 0.8% increase in university graduates over the age of 27, the Oxford report suggests. Payroll is up 2% for university graduates in all other professions.
The broader sector, including job openings in professional and business services, has fallen by about 1 million to 1.5 million over the past two years, workers figures show.
This trend has broadly driven the job market needle. Oxford’s analysis shows that 12% of the country’s rising unemployment rate since mid-2023 can come from recent struggles among university graduates.
Are high-tech jobs still in high demand?
Many tech companies, like IT departments in companies across a variety of industries, employ about half of their previous software developers, says Kye Mitchell, head of Experis Us, is the recruitment department for staffing temps.
Instead, AI often handles basic software development tasks, but data architects and scientists together with AI coaches set up data and teach AI how to manipulate it, Mitchell said. Many developers are retrained for these high-level roles, but this change will result in fewer entry-level jobs in the short term and fewer opportunities for recent graduates.
The company’s careful approach to increasing employment and cost-effectiveness through AI has been amplified by the uncertainty created by the trade war, she said.
“People are cautious,” she said. “AI has become even tougher for college alumni these days.”
Mitchell advised the major to take more analytical specialized analytic classes to increase the chances of landing a position.
“If you’re a more generalist, you’re in trouble,” she said.
Are high-tech companies laying off?
Meanwhile, some large tech companies have fired workers who perform management, customer service and data entry tasks, Mitchell said they have replaced them with AI. In May, Microsoft announced 6,000 layoffs worldwide, with CEO Satya Nadella saying that around 30% of the company’s code is currently written by AI.
Other companies, including Google and Salesforce, announced layoffs as well as revealing heavy AI rollouts, according to technology news site Tech.co.
Traditionally, new technologies that wipe out some jobs have ultimately created new positions that improve productivity and growth, ultimately offset losses.
But Mitchell said, “People are really not sure…we’ve never been in this era.”
By 2030, activities that account for 30% of the time they currently work in the US could be automated, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. This is a trend accelerated by AI.
