The Young Worker Squeeze
Recent-graduate underemployment gap and prime-age employment-rate advantage over ages 20–24 · annual averages. Both young-worker labor-market gaps widened after 2023. It reveals whether a healthy aggregate labor market is concealing deteriorating entry conditions.
What does it show?
Both young-worker labor-market gaps widened after 2023.
Methodology
Average each source's published monthly values within complete calendar years. Subtract all-college-graduate underemployment from recent-graduate underemployment, and subtract the ages 20–24 employment-population ratio from the ages 25–54 ratio. Both are percentage-point gaps, but they measure different populations and outcomes. New York Fed underemployment is already a seasonally adjusted three-month moving average; annual averaging adds further smoothing. The chart describes relative labor-market outcomes and does not attribute them to AI. What this isn't: The two gaps measure different populations and outcomes, and the chart does not attribute them to AI.