WASHINGTON - Over two years, Ms Rebecca Atkins filed more than 250 job applications, and felt like every one was going into a gaping chasm – one opened by the highest unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the United States in more than a decade.

“It was extremely dispiriting,” said the 25-year-old, who graduated in 2022 with a degree in law and justice from a university in the US capital Washington. “I was convinced that I was a terrible person, and terrible at working.”

At 5.8 per cent, unemployment for young, recent graduates from US universities is higher than it has been since November 2013, excluding 15 months in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to official data.

Moreover, it has also remained stubbornly higher than overall unemployment – an extremely unusual situation, analysts say.

And while overall US unemployment has stabilised between around 3.5 and 4 per cent post-pandemic, unemployment for recent college graduates is only trending higher.

The labour market for new grads has weakened consistently since 2022, with new hiring down 16 per cent in 2025, year-over-year, according to payroll firm Gusto.

Analysts say the trend is likely a result of cyclical post-pandemic hiring slowdowns – particularly in new-grad-heavy sectors like technology, finance, and business information – and overall economic uncertainty in the tumultuous early days of the Trump administration.

That is scant consolation to the droves of young people – often saddled with huge amounts of student debt – on the hunt for their first full-time job.

“All of the jobs that I wanted, I didn’t have the requirements for – often entry-level jobs would require you to have four or five years of experience,” said Ms Atkins, who bounced between part-time roles and working in restaurants for years.

“It is definitely an outlier,” said Mr Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics. “You’d expect that...