Gen Z graduates are blaming AI for their unemployment woes when they should be looking somewhere else

While recent graduates kicked off their summer of potential unemployment by booing commencement speakers extolling the benefits of AI, they may have to look elsewhere to blame for those low hire rates. One top economist argued the generation has reasons beyond just the technology to blame for the weak job market they are inheriting, and the proof is simply because today’s unemployment data changed little after the introduction of today’s popular AI tools. “Many have been quick to blame the gap on ChatGPT’s November 2022 release and the broader rise of AI,” Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok said in a recent blog post. “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.” The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has held stubbornly at 5.6%, about the same as it was a year ago. Recent graduate unemployment is considerably higher than the 4.2% unemployment rate for all workers, which is already its highest in four years, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Slok noted a divergence in unemployment rates between Gen Z graduates and the general population beginning around April 2022, about six months before ChatGPT’s release, leading him to conclude that other factors must be behind the generation’s widening unemployment. He explained that while unemployment for college graduates and recent college graduates has exceeded the broader unemployment rate, the gap between these numbers has remained stable, both prior to and after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT nearly four years ago. The Apollo economist’s observation sheds light on a disconnect Gen Z is facing as it enters the workforce: AI is stirring anxiety and resentment, despite young people facing a slew of econo