A university education has long been seen as a reliable path to a good job. However, research shows that, at least in the US, it's becoming more difficult for graduates with bachelor's degrees to get entry-level jobs in their fields of study. The report by the Burning Glass Institute, No Country for Young Grads, said that young US graduates are facing unemployment rates that are rising faster than for people of any other age or level of education. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds with at least a bachelor's degree has grown from 5.2% in 2018-2019 to 6.2% in the two years leading up to June 2025. Meanwhile, the rate of unemployment for people with less education has mostly declined over the last few years. As a result, the only group with a higher unemployment rate than young college graduates is people who only have a high school diploma. People of the same age who went to vocational school or got a two-year diploma — and even those who went to college for a while but never graduated — all have lower rates of unemployment. When young college graduates do get jobs, the report said that over half of them take positions they didn't even need their bachelor's degree for. Gad Levanon from the Burning Glass Institute told CNBC that this may be because while there is a rising number of people in the US getting bachelor's degrees, the demand for workers with this level of education hasn't kept up. The report says the difference in worker supply and demand has a lot to do with the rise of AI. A lot of the work that businesses previously would have given to entry-level workers, such as research, data analysis and even basic communication tasks, can now be done by AI.