NPR.
This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Adrian Ma.
And I'm Darian Woods.
And it's Jobs Friday.
It's the day of the month where we look at the latest government jobs report and we spotlight trends in the labor market.
And today's jobs report shows a rebound.
178,000 jobs were added in March, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3%.
That's raising hopes that the sluggish labor market we've been seeing might be picking up.
For months, economists have used one phrase to describe the state of the jobs market.
Low hire, low fire.
That means employers overall are not cutting many jobs, but they're also not adding much either.
Yeah, and this stagnation, the lack of workers flowing in and out of different jobs.
That can be particularly tough for people at the very start of their careers.
You know, the ones looking for entry-level jobs.
For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated the unemployment rate for recent college grads is 56.
That's people with a bachelor's degree or higher.
But that stat only tells part of the story.
So today on the show, we dig deeper to understand what low hire, low fire means for those trying to get their first jobs, and if it applies to all of them.
With graduation season a few weeks away, we wanted to get a sense of how college students are feeling about the job market.
So we paid a visit to the campus of Howard University in D.C.
Tell me about your job search process.
How's that been going?
Yes.
Yes, actually, I was having a little bit of trouble, honestly.
This is Monica Maya.
She's a senior majoring in chemical engineering.
Do you know roughly about how many jobs you've applied for?
Well, the past semester, the past six months, I would say probably 50 jobs.
And have I heard back?
You know, some denials.
But yeah, I haven't actually secured the position that I want yet, so I'm still looking.
And of course, Monica isn't unique in this.
Some people apply to 100 200 jobs before they land one, while others, like Sanyu Lakoma, are just trying to lock down an internship.
Sanyu's a junior majoring in broadcast journalism and she says her friends who are graduating soon are getting worried.
There's definitely anxiety, because not only is the job market getting more challenging to navigate, but prices are getting higher.
And when we are graduating from college.
Our degree is great, what we studied is great, but not having a job is dangerous.
Now a little or even a lot of job search anxiety is normal, but there's no denying recent and soon-to-be grads are facing some additional obstacles right now.
To better understand those, we reached out to Laura Ulrich.
As a director of economic research for the job listing site Indeed, she's got a ton of data at her fingertips on employers and job seekers.
And so given the negative recent data, I asked her to put it in context.
How worried should young job seekers be?
It depends on what field these new grads are going into.
You know, overall, the rate has risen.
But this isn't true for all people who are graduating college.
Actually, my oldest son graduated college last year and is going into data science.
And that is a field where, indeed, we're seeing job postings are down 30% compared to pre-COVID.
So that's a hard field to go into.
But there are many more where postings remain very elevated.
So civil engineering, for example, is up about 40% compared to pre-COVID.
So I worry sometimes when we paint this blanket picture that it's tough for all new grads.
I don't think that's the case.
But in certain fields, it's extremely tough right now.
Well, can you go more into that?
Like.
What does your data show in terms of what kinds of skills or majors employers are looking for in this moment?
Yeah, so we definitely have seen a decline in tech postings.
Part of it is about the uncertainty around AI.
There's other things going on as well in the tech sector, including the fact that they overhired.
There's a lot going on that is disrupting that market.
So majors like computer science, but also engineering.
Data science, data analytics business is tougher right now, but we still see a lot of strength in, as I mentioned engineering, but also all of the healthcare fields, and certainly also in, like the skilled trade.
So if you're coming out of community college with an associate degree in plumbing or you're ready to become an electrician,
There's still a lot of opportunities in those fields.
So right now we're seeing a period of time where I would call it an adjustment phase, where people who have majored in fields like computer science in 2026 those graduates are likely to find jobs.
It's just going to take longer and they may not get the same salaries they were expecting two years ago.
I mean to just go a bit more into what is making employers reluctant to fire or hire right now.
Is it just sort of like how they're figuring in AI, or is how much of the story is like uncertainty created by things like the tariff policy of the Trump administration?
Yeah.
There's a saying in economics and finance that markets hate uncertainty, and I think that is absolutely true.
There's actually something called the Economic Uncertainty Index that has been at much higher levels in the past year or so than we've seen previously in this country.
And what we know about uncertainty is that it's hard for business leaders to make decisions in that environment.
So, as an economist, I'm not surprised that we're seeing the stagnancy we're seeing in the labor market.
If you have a job, the probability that you're going to be laid off from your current job is low right now, unless you're in a few targeted sectors.
However, if you are unemployed, It is much more difficult to find a job in 2026 than it was a couple years ago.
We went to a college campus yesterday and spoke to some seniors who are on the cusp of graduating.
And one of the things they mentioned is that they feel like they have to compete not just with other – job applicants, but with like bots who are applying for jobs, and sometimes they come across listings that appear to be ghost jobs, which are, i guess, listings for jobs that don't actually exist.
Uh, do you have any data that gives us a sense of like, how big of an issue this is?
I will say we're not seeing big increases there.
What I do think is happening is that there are a lot more applicants per job right now because there's more people looking for jobs right.
And so I do think there are more people who are just not hearing back from companies.
We certainly do know that there are more and more bots that are applying for people like.
The volume of applications is going up.
And companies like Indeed have to try really hard to sort those bots and those jobs out, right?
And so there are certainly internal efforts that are far beyond what I do as an economist at the business level to try to mitigate those issues.
Any advice for people who are graduating soon or just trying to break into their first jobs?
I think staying an active seeker is the best possible solution while you're still trying to network and meet people and get out there.
I just encourage new grads, including my own kids, keep your head up, keep marching forward.
You're going to land that first job.
It may not be the one you thought you were going to be in, but I think if you continue to work hard, the market will turn at some point.
It'll change and you want to be primed and ready to move up into that next job.
Okay, so Laura Ulrich says the market will turn around eventually.
But will that change come in time for students graduating this year?
Back at Howard University, senior Monica Maya told us that she could have actually graduated last year with her chemical engineering degree.
But she decided to stay on a fifth year because she wasn't finding the kind of job she was hoping for.
So I asked her how she's feeling now about her job prospects with graduation just around the corner.
Are you sort of feeling optimistic or starting to get a little worried?
Right now, I'm really just taking it one day at a time, one application at a time, one LinkedIn connection at a time.
And I'm very excited for the future.
I think it'll be good.
So Monica, at least, is keeping her head up.
This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and engineered by Robert Rodriguez.
It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.
Kicking Cannon edits the show and the indicators of production of NPR.
