This Year's Graduate Facing Toughest Job Market Since COVID-19 Pandemic

Tuesday, April 28th, 2026 -- 12:00 PM

(Joe Schulz, Wisconsin Public Radio) This year’s grads are trying to begin their careers in the toughest job market since the COVID-19 pandemic, which experts say has been driven by a broader slowdown in hiring.

According to Joe Schulz with the Wisconsin Public Radio, sicholas Jolly, a labor economist and associate professor of economics at Marquette University, said the labor market is “not nearly as hot” as it was in the years after the pandemic, which saw strong job growth as the economy reopened.

“We had a very tight labor market post-pandemic,” he said. “It’s now softened as markets have adjusted.” Unemployment has remained low at 4.3 percent nationally in March and 3.4 percent in Wisconsin in February, the most recent months with available data.

But the rate of job openings has been nearly cut in half since its peak in 2022. “If the overall labor market is getting softer, it stands to reason that it’s going to get softer for entry-level jobs as well,” Jolly said.

As the market cools, employers often raise experience or skill requirements for open roles, making it harder for recent graduates to qualify, he said. “It does make it harder to meet what would be called the minimum qualifications on those job advertisements,” he said. “It does make it hard to land that first job as quickly as before.”

Along with the post-pandemic cooldown, economists also say uncertainty surrounding shifting tariffs, immigration policies and the conflict in the Middle East are contributing to the soft labor market.

“When you can’t predict the future, or you’re very uncertain about it, you tend not to do anything,” said John Nunley, an economics professor at UW-La Crosse who specializes in labor economics. “That would include companies not hiring, not expanding, and so forth. Businesses need to be able to plan.”

But there are signs the job market could improve after being “lackluster” for two years, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. A new employer survey released in April, based on 185 respondents, showed employers expect to increase hiring new college grads from the class of 2026 by 5.6 percent, after a relatively flat projection this past fall.

Economists say there’s little evidence that the rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving the slowdown, but it’s hard to predict how the technology will change the job market in the long-run. “Anything you say today may not be true in five years,” Nunley said. “It’s really difficult to predict technology.”

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