Was 2025 really the worst year to graduate?

Graduates entering the US labour market in 2025 faced tougher conditions than recent cohorts. Fewer moved straight into work, fewer secured roles aligned with their degree, and real starting salaries fell to their lowest level in four years.

But the class of 2025 was not hit by a sudden shock. New analysis points to a gradual weakening of early career outcomes that began as the post-pandemic hiring surge unwound, rather than a single-year collapse.

Data from Revelio Labs, drawing on US workforce records, shows a market that has cooled steadily since 2023. Entry-level hiring has slowed, job quality has slipped, and the transition from education into stable employment has become longer and less predictable.

Although the findings focus on the US, the pattern mirrors concerns increasingly raised by UK employers and universities about graduate recruitment, job fit, and early career progression.

Entry-level hiring tightens

The most immediate change has been timing. The share of bachelor’s graduates starting a job in the same year they completed their degree has fallen each year since 2023. For the 2025 cohort, just 36.6 percent reported both graduating and entering work within the year.

Headline unemployment figures obscure this shift. Overall employment levels have remained relatively stable, but entry-level hiring has not. Revelio Labs reports a sustained decline in junior job openings and a fall in the share of under-25s starting new roles since mid-2023.

Graduates are not necessarily out of work. They are entering later, searching longer, or accepting roles more quickly when opportunities appear.

Degree relevance weakens

As competition for entry-level roles increases, job match quality has deteriorated.

The proportion of graduates whose first role aligns with their field of study has dropped from over 25 percent for the 2022 cohort to around 20 percent for those graduating in 2025. Most still enter white-collar work, but a growing share are taking positions outside their discipline.

Early career mismatches matter. First roles shape skills development, earnings trajectories, and long-term mobility. A market that pushes graduates to prioritise speed over fit risks embedding weaker outcomes from the outset.

Pay follows the same trend

Pay data reinforces the picture. After peaking for the 2021 cohort, inflation-adjusted starting salaries have declined year on year. Graduates entering the workforce in 2025 recorded the lowest real starting pay since 2021.

Lower pay reflects more than cost-of-living pressures. It points to graduates being absorbed into roles with lower responsibility, weaker progression, or limited relevance to their qualifications.

More graduates delay labour market entry

Faced with fewer attractive entry-level options, more graduates have opted to remain in education. The share enrolling in postgraduate study in the same year as graduation has risen since 2023, climbing from under 11 percent in 2020 to over 12 percent in recent cohorts.

That figure eased slightly for 2025, likely reflecting funding constraints within universities rather than an improvement in hiring conditions. The incentive to delay labour market entry remains strong, even as capacity in graduate programmes tightens.

Implications for employers and educators

Early career outcomes are often the first area where labour market strain becomes visible. Slower transitions into work, weaker job matches, and declining real pay increase the risk of long-term scarring for graduates, even when headline employment figures appear stable.

For employers, a softer entry-level market offers access to a wider pool of capable candidates, but only for organisations prepared to recruit earlier and invest in training. Those expecting graduates to arrive fully job-ready may find the pipeline narrowing further.

For universities and policymakers, the findings underline the need to strengthen pathways from education into work. Paid internships, apprenticeships, and structured early career roles are becoming less discretionary and more foundational to workforce resilience.

The class of 2025 may not be uniquely unlucky. Their experience highlights a graduate labour market that has become slower, looser, and less forgiving, and one that is drifting rather than correcting.