Georgia college grads struggle to find work as recession worries loom

And the possibility of a recession in 2025 remains considerable. In early April, J.P Morgan raised the probability from 40% to 60%, citing Trump’s “aggressive” tariff policy.

“It’s not a great labor market to get into,” said Daniel Kreisman, an associate professor of economics at GSU. “Uncertainty doesn’t make people hire.”

It may be premature to sound any alarms. Landing a job after graduating often takes time, some experts say. And despite some predictions that President Donald Trump’s trade wars could cause a recession and hurt workers, the U.S. Labor Department’s April jobs report was stronger than expected with the unemployment rate remaining low and payroll growth topping forecasts.

Chris Karbownik, an associate professor at Emory University with expertise in labor economics, though, is concerned about students graduating into economic uncertainty or a borderline recession. The worry is based on data showing “what happens when you graduate when the labor market is kind of stagnant,” he said.

Among students graduating and planning to start their careers, “some of their jobs were actually reneged as a result,” he said.

A Stanford University study published in 2019 found that recession graduates have higher death rates in midlife and are at significantly greater risk of drug overdoses. People who join the workforce in a downturn, according to a 2023 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “have lower long-term earnings, higher rates of disability, fewer marriages, less successful spouses, and fewer children.”

“The labor economics research suggests that these cohorts are going to feel consequences of graduating in a market like this 30, 40 years down the road,” Karbownik said.

Certain majors could struggle more than others. Industries like health care and artificial intelligence are hot, said career coach Katie Smith, founder of Get a Corporate Job. But those fields require specific skills that a student in social sciences or the humanities might not have. “That’s the biggest struggle these grads are going to find,” she said. “The degree that they’re getting in college doesn’t directly relate to jobs on the market.”

Wilson, who is hoping to work while pursuing his master’s degree this fall, has seen where the demand is and isn’t. “There’s a very big need in Georgia for teachers,” he said, adding that educator jobs are plentiful. But he wants to work in public policy, with an end goal of joining the U.S. Department of Education. After mass terminations at the department and other agencies, not only are fewer federal jobs available, but laid-off workers are vying for them.

“You have a huge class of highly trained, highly skilled employees that are now unemployed, looking for work,” said Wilson, who was GSU’s student government association president. “Now we’re competing for the same jobs, so that’s also creating strain.”

His classmate Malachi Barratt, who graduated with a degree in computer information systems, said he’s applied to about 50 jobs in cybersecurity. He’s had no luck so far. He said many of the people he’s competing with for entry level jobs have master’s degrees.

During recessions, many people go to grad school to wait out the bad labor market. But Emory University economics professor Vivian Yue said that option now presents its own difficulties because of funding cuts to universities.

Wilson, Barratt and Oglethorpe University grad Stephen Boles said students who found work did so at companies where they had a personal connection or an internship.

Georgia Tech grad Susannah Gordon has had a job lined up since the fall. She accepted a return offer from a company where she previously interned and will work as a consultant helping to provide power for solar farms and data centers. “It’s a huge growing industry that always is looking for people,” said Gordon, who studied electrical engineering. “They never have enough because everyone needs power.”

She said she feels lucky. Some of her friends have regrets about their choice of major after seeing entry-level jobs require technical qualifications that are “a little unrealistic to be asking college grads to have experience in,” she said.

A constrained labor market increases the likelihood a recent grad will have to take a job unrelated to their field of study. Kreisman said that’s particularly true with student loan payments looming. If consumer prices increase across the economy, grads will feel increased pressure to find work, even if that work isn’t relevant to their major. That can make it harder to enter their desired field later.

“The fewer jobs and the quicker they need to get one makes it less likely that they find a good fit,” Kreisman said. “And if that happens, then the evidence says that they’re more likely to not reach the trajectory that they might have had if they graduated in a different labor market.”

After more than 50 applications, Boles, who studied communications and business, has had some interviews but no offers. “I know this isn’t an uncommon situation to be in right out of school,” he said. “However, as time goes on, if things still haven’t worked out, then I’m sure the frustration will grow.”

Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this report.