The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has grown significantly in recent years

The college degrees with the highest unemployment rates, visualized

Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows which college degrees have had the highest unemployment rates in the US as of May 2025. Degrees in anthropology, physics, and computer engineering ranked high on the list.

The US youth unemployment rate jumped from 6.6% in 2023 to 10.4% in 2025

Specifically, the "youth unemployment rate" here refers to those aged 16 to 24. Whether the culprit is AI, more people getting college degrees or something else, experts argue this could have a negative impact on the economy going forward.

Only 3% of workers 18 and older had a 25+ year tenure at their current job as of 2024

Surprisingly, this statistic hasn't changed significantly between 1996 and 2024, despite news about job hopping becoming more common in recent years.

Explore an interactive tool that reveals why Americans are unemployed

Among unemployed Americans ages 25 to 54, almost 30% cited being laid off as the reason for their unemployment.

Total student debt has ballooned to $1.7T, up almost 150% since the Great Recession

While the burden falls across roughly 43 million Americans, the debt load itself is not uniform—millennials and those pursuing graduate or professional degrees represent an outsized portion of loans.

The best investing advice for new college grads

While new college graduates typically don't have much money to invest, creating a plan for the money they earn from their first job can set them up for a promising financial future. This list of investing advice for new grads includes recommendations like enrolling in their company's retirement plan as soon as possible, prioritizing building an emergency fund, and more. Read the full list here.

In a survey of US Gen Z workers, 53% were freelancing for at least 40 hours per week

Overall, Gen Z has a pretty different attitude about work from previous generations, partly because of the economic hardship they’ve witnessed being born into the Great Recession and coming of age during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is college worth it?

Higher education has long been viewed as a stepping stone to more stable and higher-paying careers. Estimates suggest a college degree nearly triples average lifetime earnings. But the perception of value is different—only 22% of Americans say college is worth taking out loans for.

The university system has an enrollment problem

Enrollment has dropped over the past few years—especially for men. In this Freakonomics podcast episode, educators and economists explain why they think college enrollment has been on the decline. They also offer solutions and make predictions for the future of college.

As of 2021, 25% of 40-year-olds in the United States had never been married

If you’re in your forties and without a college degree, you’re significantly less likely to have ever been married now than in the past. Ditto for Black 40-year-olds and middle-aged men. There’s been a huge jump from the 6% of 40-year-olds who had never been married in 1980. Despite the historical significance of marriage, the trend away from wedded bliss has been rising steadily over the past three decades.

Tech, finance, and consulting industries hire roughly 70% of students from top MBA programs

However, hiring in these sectors has slowed in recent years due to overhiring and other factors, making the job search more difficult for recent MBA grads. This Wall Street Journal podcast episode has more details.

See a census of college students dating back to 1850

The first mention of college students in census surveys dates back to 1850, when officials realized a sizeable proportion of Americans lived on campus. More modern data from the National Center for Education Statistics capture the growth in the student population, with a breakdown beginning at the end of World War II with gender and type-of-institution data.

25% of US households had no regular income as of 2024

Some states had higher shares of no-income households than others: West Virginia, for instance, had a national high of 34% of households with no income. These states tend to have older populations, higher rates of disability, and lower median incomes overall. In such contexts, a larger portion of households rely on non-earned income sources or report no income during the survey period.

COVID-19's shock to employment rates sparked some economists to fear deflation

COVID-19 simultaneously disrupted the supply chain and the labor market. Since the unemployment rate had hit record highs, some economists were worried that the supply chain would recover before the labor market. If that had happened, businesses would have been producing goods, but no one would have been able to buy them because they wouldn't have the disposable income to do so.

Do unions still work?

Workers everywhere from Starbucks to Uber have made headlines about unionizing—and some union experts argue that despite union membership being lower than it was in eras past, unions could still help the economy.

US teachers' earnings have declined since 2010

Although teachers are among the nation’s most educated workers, they earn far less on average than most other highly educated workers. More than 95% of elementary, middle and high school teachers have a bachelor’s degree or more. In 2019, the average earnings of elementary and middle school teachers with a bachelor’s degree or more who work full-time, year-round was $53,800. For high school teachers, it was $57,840.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Missouri had the fastest job growth rate in 2025

Between 2024 and 2025, Missouri had a 1.7% job growth rate—representing the percent increase in jobs in a particular state over the course of a year. North Carolina and South Carolina trailed Missouri with annual job growth rates of 1.5% and 1.3% respectively.

The number of people collecting money from gig work tripled between 2017 and 2021

That includes people driving for Lyft or delivering food through GrubHub. Those people might be changing the face of the US economy at large, too. Gig work provides a cushion between jobs outside of government unemployment assistance, for example.

Studies show H-1B workers help address shortages in STEM fields

Research finds that unemployment rates in occupations employing large numbers of H-1B workers remained low between 2004 and 2023, even during the pandemic. Other studies suggest H-1Bs complement US workers in STEM fields and expand job opportunities.

US homeownership rates declined from the start of the Great Recession through 2016

In 2004, the US homeownership rate was 69%. When the bubble popped in 2007, due to a variety of factors (including the prevalence of subprime mortgages) the Great Recession began. Foreclosures increased, as did the ratio of renters to homeowners. In 2016, the homeownership rate was at roughly 63.4%.

Gen Z is drinking less alcohol than older generations

In the years 2001 through 2003, 72% of adults under age 35 said they drank. But by the time the years 2021 through 2023 rolled around, only 62% of under-35 adults could say the same, according to one recent study.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

The share of workers with remote-capable jobs working from home peaked in 2020

Every year, it seems like some study is claiming that remote work is over, and that employers are forcing workers to return to office en masse. This chart shows a much more nuanced picture of how remote work has fluctuated before, during, and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic—remote, hybrid, and in-person work levels have remained relatively stable since 2023.

Average three-month CD rates reached a historical high of 18.65% in December 1980

Comparatively, average three-month CD rates reached a low of 0.09% in June 2021 amid the economic turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic. When inflation began to rise in 2022, the Fed began initiating rate hikes to incentivize saving.

Do resume gaps still matter?

Although the modern approach to work-life balance might make resume gaps seem less taboo than they were in decades past, the truth is more nuanced. A recent study explored how a major gap in your resume may affect your career at large. It also discovered how explaining the gap in an application or resume can mitigate any damage. Click here to learn more.

Stanford and Harvard are among the universities producing the most startup founders

Not all startup founders are created equal. This data visualization of the universities that produce the most startup founders is based on the number of alumni who have raised venture capital funding for their companies. That means these alums had to do much more than put "entrepreneur" in their LinkedIn bio to be considered startup founders.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Fireworks-related ER visits are on the rise—in 2024, they increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in terms of casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.