April 20, 2026 | Ray A. Smith and Te-Ping Chen
Several new signals suggest employers are boosting entry-level hiring this spring after gloomier projections just months ago
At long last, the job market might be giving the Class of 2026 an early graduation present.
After years of steady deterioration, there are early signs entry-level hiring is picking up. A widely watched survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers out Monday shows employers expect to boost new-graduate hires by 5.6% this spring from a year ago—a turnaround from their much grimmer forecasts last fall.
Another recent survey by ZipRecruiter found nearly a third of employers planned to hire a greater share of entry-level workers this year than the previous one. Big companies such as McKinsey and International Business Machines say they have also increased graduate hiring this year.
Meanwhile, unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees and higher dropped sharply in March to 5.3%, according to an analysis by BofA Global Research published Friday. That is down from a decade high, excluding the pandemic’s early months, of 8.9% last fall.
Those signals suggest that, for now, some employers feel the need to replenish their pipelines of entry-level workers after holding back for several seasons. In some cases, artificial intelligence is spurring hires by enabling companies to expand services and product lines, said NACE President Shawn VanDerziel.
“It’s good news, but it does need to be moderated with the fact that the last two years’ hiring has been down considerably,” VanDerziel said.
Graduates say they also see glimmers of a rebound. In a separate ZipRecruiter survey of 1,500 recent graduates released last week, those who said they landed a role within three months of graduation climbed to 77% from 63% last year, even as competition for entry-level roles intensified, the job site found.
Some of the rebound might reflect graduates’ willingness to lower their sights, ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud cautioned. “It could be working in a fast-food place or driving for DoorDash,” she said.
Job opportunities for college graduates have sputtered in recent years. Companies, especially in tech, continue to course-correct from overhiring during the pandemic. The rise of generative AI, which can replicate many basic entry-level tasks, has also stifled hiring.
“Companies have a perfect-candidate mentality,” said Jerry Goldstein, a career coach at New York City’s Fordham University. “They’re, like, we’ll hire, but we don’t want to train anybody, and we’re going to take our time.”
Still, in recent months, he has seen more hiring for jobs in fields such as healthcare and in AI-related roles, even as recruitment in human resources and marketing has dropped off.
Karsen MacDougall
Soon-to-be graduates say it has taken a lot of legwork to land job offers. Karsen MacDougall, a senior at High Point University in North Carolina, was feeling anxious when she still hadn’t gotten a job by February. By then, the entrepreneurship major had applied for 30 roles and gone through 10 job interviews.
Then last month, she was offered a job as a sales representative with the Charlotte Hornets, where she had been cultivating contacts since her sophomore year. “I was very surprised, very excited and I was, more, just relieved,” she said.
She thinks the networking made the difference. “I went the extra mile to reach out to someone, whether they were on HR or whether they were the hiring manager,” she said. “Just doing something that maybe other candidates that were against me were not doing.”
Graduates who worked during school landed jobs at twice the rate, 82%, of those who didn’t, 41%, the new ZipRecruiter report found.
Giovani Hodgson Carlos Badia
Giovani Hodgson, a senior at the University of Kentucky, said internships from his freshman year on helped him secure a spot in Ernst & Young’s supply-chain and operations division once he graduates.
“It’s more competitive, so you’ve got to do more and be more well-rounded,” the finance and accounting major said.
Yet for plenty of other members of the Class of 2026, the job market remains challenging, said Beth Hendler-Grunt, founder of Next Great Step, a New York metro area career-coaching company for college students and recent graduates. “I have highly qualified students who have been actively networking, showing their value, following up and still having a hard time,” she said.
In the NACE survey, more than half of employers said they had discussed replacing early-career tasks with AI.
McKinsey, a big recruiter at a number of top colleges, said its entry-level hiring is up this year and is likely to rise again next year, even as AI reshapes some of the work its entry-level consultants do.
“We think the work is going to continue to be even more important, but the nature of it is going to shift,” said Blair Ciesil, a McKinsey partner leading global talent attraction at the firm.
IBM, which is tripling U.S. entry-level hiring in 2026, said its junior roles have evolved rapidly, too.
“The jobs that we had two years ago, AI can do almost all of it,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s chief human-resources officer. Now, those roles include fewer rote tasks and more work with customers and problem-solving.
