The class of 2026 will likely face the worst job market for new graduates in the last five years, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers released on November 11.
NACE detailed that six percent of employers rate the job market as poor, a three percentage point increase from last year. In addition, approximately 70 percent of employers believe that the decrease in hires is due largely to a reduction in business needs and projects.
“I can’t tell you [my] future in two years. It’s very hard to tell,” said Kairat Berik, who is an international student pursuing a master’s degree in engineering management at USC. “Overall, it’s a very scary situation for everybody.”
While there are no guarantees, the study also highlighted tips on how students can better their chances of employment.
“Students need to be prepared in interviews to give specific examples that demonstrate the skills that they’ve acquired in their jobs, internships and classes,” said Mary Gatta, the director of research and public policy at the NACE, who conducted the study.
In the report, employers named their top tips as: prepare for interviews that demonstrate their skills, participate in experiential learning and/or work during college and translate college coursework into a skills language. Gatta believes that these tips for students to be successful in the workforce can also extend to how career services advise their students.
“One of the main things that I’ve been doing is going to the career center and figuring out, first of all, what I actually want to do with my degree and what I want to go into.They’ve been very helpful,” Jesus Chavez, a senior economics major, said. “They give you little tips and tricks about how to ace an interview, what a resume should look like, and yeah, I think it’s pretty helpful.”
Josef Brosche, a junior applied math and computation major, also expressed the difficulty students face in obtaining internships to gain the necessary skills in the workforce.
“You just kind of have to mass apply at this point,” Brosche said. “Like, you can’t just pick one or two that you really like. You just have to throw out hundreds and hope one of them sticks.”
While the decrease in jobs available to graduates can be attributed to several factors, artificial intelligence is also a major contributor to the drop in entry-level positions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Employers are now giving these entry-level tasks to AI. Additionally, more and more employees are now expected to have AI skills; according to the study, over 10 percent of entry-level job posts require them. “What they [employers] told us is that … AI would not be replacing entry-level jobs in the next three to five years,” said Gatta. “They did see AI assisting and augmenting entry-level jobs in the next three to five years.”
With a tough job market for students following college, faculty at USC are attempting to better prepare graduates to enter this changing market. Professor Glenn Melnick started an AI Knowledge Hub at USC to help students navigate how to use this tool to become more employable.
“We’re going to continually build a website to give them training videos to develop their own skill base in AI,” said Melnick. “The ones who are going to get jobs are the ones who have AI on their CV.”
With uncertainty in the job market post-graduation, USC students are striving to best prepare themselves with the necessary skills for when the time comes to apply for jobs.
“It’s definitely stressful working on getting the internship for next summer and getting a job after a senior year,” Brosche said. “I don’t know how stressful it was in the past years, but it’s definitely very stressful now.”