Bloomberg Businessweek May 2026

Год выпуска: May 2026

Автор: Bloomberg Businessweek

Жанр: Экономика/Финансы

Издательство: Bloomberg L.P.

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 96

A Healthy Economy Needs Entry-Level Jobs

The 5 million or so young people looking to enter the labor market in the early 1990s got a brutal reception. I was one of them, and I remember rejection letters to my job applications raining into my college dorm mailbox. “The prospect of a position becoming available is dim,” read an unusually blunt response on official letterhead from Time magazine. (I still have it.) The recession of those years, triggered in part by the savings and loan crisis of the late ’80s and the spike in energy prices due to the Gulf War in 1990-91, sent youth unemployment skyrocketing to 13.4%, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Economists dubbed the subsequent period “the jobless recovery.”

Although companies today respond to candidates digitally rather than with the occasionally rude form letter—if they respond at all—the conditions for first-time job seekers then and now are similar. The unemployment rate for college graduates age 22 to 27 rose to 5.6% at the end of last year; it was 4.1% at the end of 2022. “The labor market is generally softening, and new entrants are always the first place you see it,” says Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

This should worry not just the class of 2026 and their concerned parents but really everyone. The availability of entrylevel jobs for young people plays a significant role in their career growth and in the long-term health of the economy. A scarcity of opportunity deprives future workers of important experience and the economy of consumers paid well enough to stimulate demand. As the stories in the May issue of Bloomberg Businessweek show, the job market is gloomy for young people, and no one is quite sure what’s going to happen with the biggest bogeyman: artificial intelligence, which could allow companies to surgically remove the proverbial bottom rung of the corporate ladder.

Economists have a word for the damaging effects of a labor market that’s unwelcoming to young people: scarring. Till von Wachter, a professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles, studied the cohort of Americans who entered the labor market during the steep recession of the early 1980s and found those unlucky job seekers not only had lower earnings for at least the first 10 years of their career but also higher rates of divorce, fewer children, poorer health and higher mortality from lung, liver and heart disease. “First jobs are a steppingstone for people as they climb into better jobs over the course of their careers,” von Wachter says. “There’s growing evidence that if people aren’t able to get their foot on the ladder, because there aren’t many jobs available when they graduate, their economic conditions are altered for a long period of time.”

There’s not a ton of research yet on AI’s impact on the labor market. Many observers fear that it’s likeliest to eliminate the kind of entry-level jobs that prepare workers for a long, productive career—a more permanent version of the high youth unemployment evident during cyclical recessions. Last August the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research examined payroll data and found a 13% relative decline in employment in “AI-exposed” occupations such as software developers. Workers age 22 to 25 experienced a 6% decline in employment from late 2022 to July 2025, while “employment for older workers continues to grow,” the researchers wrote. Other labor economists, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David Autor, say that AI will augment the capabilities and judgment of young workers instead of replacing them and that technology has historically created new jobs even as it makes others obsolete.

Governments have long recognized that unemployed young people risk turning into disaffected and less productive workers down the line. Denmark, Germany and Switzerland have joined forces with employers to fund apprenticeship programs in health care, social services, construction trades and other occupations. In the US, taxpayers subsidize medical school education and residency programs. In China, the government funds vocational schools and subsidizes entry-level jobs in manufacturing hubs and high-tech zones.

A federal AI-era apprenticeship program could reinforce the bottom rung of the ladder, giving workers experience in their chosen field that they can then take to any potential employer. Young people should never be deprived of that formative first job—or fond memories of their first rejection letters.

Remarks

• If you never land that first job, how do you get the second?

In Context

• No room to maneuver around the next recession
• Elon Musk wants to change the rules in South Africa
• The oil bandits of the Permian Basin
• Why Americans are so thirsty for China’s EVs
• A Walk With: OpenTable’s Debby Soo

In View

• How to give Cuba a fresh start
• Books offering insights into Cuba’s politics and people
• The US oil industry didn’t want a war with Iran
• Quince becomes e-commerce’s surprising breakout star

First Jobs

• Good luck, graduates! You’ll need it
• What it’s really like to begin a career now
• More and more college degrees, fewer and fewer jobs
• Add a pricey career coach to the bill, Mom and Dad
• Why grad school may not be an option, either
• No place to work? Make your own
• Vibe coding with India’s next generation of programmers
• CEO Diet: Guess who started out scooping ice cream?
• The company training AI to take everyone’s jobs
• Red Lobster burns through cash for a comeback
• Brendan Carr’s FCC declares war on “fake news”
• The tech schemer and the MIT professor

Pursuits

• Summer Travel Special: Every hiker’s dream? A helicopter
• Come to a magical corner of Spain no one knows
• Canadians aren’t keen on the US—except for its tourists
• In Greece, skip the islands and head to the mountains
• It’s time to walk into the woods with a good book
• These Marc Chagalls could be yours, sort of
• What to read, see and stream in May

Last Thing

• I’ve got the songs, you’ve got the brands—let’s make lots of money

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