Macroeconomic Indicators & Trends

June 18, 2026

Mistaking a Hiring Freeze for a Robot

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Torsten Slok

Partner, Chief Economist

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The chart below shows the unemployment rate for recent college graduates rising above the rate for college graduates overall, an unusual gap that has emerged since early 2022.

Many have been quick to blame the gap on ChatGPT's November 2022 release and the broader rise of AI.

But the AI-exposed sectors where these graduates cluster are also the most sensitive to Fed tightening, trade-war uncertainty and slowing immigration, so the entry-level squeeze is far more likely a product of the general low-hire, low-fire labor market than of a technology that companies had barely begun to deploy when the gap emerged, see also here.

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