Our Chicago: The Jobs Outlook For the Class of 2026

CHICAGO (WLS) -- At colleges around Illinois and across the country, students have earned their degrees and now they're ready to earn a living. But what does the job market look like for those entering the workforce?

According to ZipRecruiter, entry level postings are making up a smaller share of available jobs.

According to the New York Federal Reserve, the March unemployment rate among college graduates aged 22 to 27 was 5.6%, that was higher than the unemployment rate for all workers.



While some headlines have described the outlook as "brutal," Tom Gimbel, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Staffing Association describes it as "not great."



His own son just graduated from college and got a job in sales.

"I think that is a field that companies are still looking to hire. Is the job market brutal? It's not great for kids right out of college but it's better than it was in '08 after the great financial crisis and I think it's even better than it was in '01 after the dot-com bubble burst," he said.

Gimbel says what's happening is out of the control of this year's college graduates.

"It's a macroeconomic problem of big companies that have done the layoffs. We just saw here in Chicago Groupon laid off 400 people. We saw that Facebook/Meta has done it. We saw that Google's done it. So it's happening across the spectrum but that doesn't mean their aren't jobs. That's really what I want to get across is that it might be in a company you've never heard of. It might not be in technology, it might even be doing the job you thought you were supposed to do getting that degree. But there are jobs available."



Gimbel says from 2021 to 2023, a lot of tech companies over hired.



"Everybody wants to say it's all AI is the problem. And that is an issue, we can do work faster and more efficiently," he said. "Now with the macroeconomic climate, the war in Iran, what's happening in Ukraine still, companies are saying okay we've got this advent of technology with AI and we've over hired, we just don't need these people."

As for the application process, AI is playing a role.

"Technology itself has been screening out resumes for probably coming on more than a decade. It's just gotten more evolved with what you can ask it to do and the communication it has with the candidates. I do think one of the positives is as we get more AI, is there'll be more direct communication with job seekers." And he says that feedback could help people apply for the right job."