Latest news with #MatthewMartin
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Saudi Arabia's Hurdles Reshape Mideast Financial Order
Bankers and business leaders are shifting more attention toward Saudi Arabia's neighbors in the Gulf such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as the kingdom grapples with lower oil prices and weakening finances. The kingdom's budget is in deep deficit, it has raised billions of dollars through bond sales to help fund an economic transformation plan expected to cost $2 trillion, and officials are rationalizing spending. The constraints facing Saudi Arabia are prompting a rethink among businesses seeking funds or wanting to do deals. Bloomberg's Matthew Martin reports. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Saudi Arabia's Hurdles Reshape Mideast Financial Order
Bankers and business leaders are shifting more attention toward Saudi Arabia's neighbors in the Gulf such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as the kingdom grapples with lower oil prices and weakening finances. The kingdom's budget is in deep deficit, it has raised billions of dollars through bond sales to help fund an economic transformation plan expected to cost $2 trillion, and officials are rationalizing spending. The constraints facing Saudi Arabia are prompting a rethink among businesses seeking funds or wanting to do deals. Bloomberg's Matthew Martin reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
CNN
4 days ago
- Business
- CNN
This is the worst jobs market in years for college grads
The Class of 2025 faces a daunting assignment: getting hired in today's no-hire, no-fire jobs market. Overall, the US job market remains resilient. The national unemployment rate stands at just 4.2% and the economy has added jobs 52 months in a row – the second longest streak of uninterrupted job growth in US history. Yet there are some cautionary signs beneath the hood. Business decision-making has been paralyzed by the chaotic trade war. Entry-level hiring is down. And some leaders of the artificial intelligence industry say that the fast-moving technology could wipe out white-collar jobs, if it's not already starting to do that. But even as the overall labor market looks relatively healthy, economists say this is the worst market for new college graduates since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent grads are finding that it takes considerable timeto get hired, leaving them unemployed and saddled with student debt for a frustratingly long time. For the first time since record-keeping on the topic began in 1980, the unemployment rate for recent graduates (those 22 to 27 years old with a bachelor's degree or higher) is consistently higher than the national unemployment rate, according to Oxford Economics. 'It's a very difficult jobs market for college graduates, and it will take time to work out of this,' said Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics. Since mid-2023, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has climbed by 1.6 percentage points – triple the national increase, according to Oxford Economics. The unemployment rate for those aged 20 to 24 is nearly twice as high as the national average at 8.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This picture is more concerning for young men, who grapple with an unemployment rate of 9.6% compared to 6.7% a year ago. After scrambling in 2021 and 2022 to hire workers, businesses are taking a much more cautious approach today as they navigate the murky trade war and grapple with high interest rates. The number of people collecting unemployment checks climbed in mid-May to a fresh four-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's a signal it's taking longer for people hunting for work to find a job. Entry-level hiring is down 23% compared to March 2020, exceeding the 18% decline in overall hiring over the same period, according to professional networking platform LinkedIn. ''No hire/no fire' is a difficult state of play for workers looking for a new job, but it is supportive of lower inflation, higher productivity and persistent economic growth in the long-run,' Thomas Simons, chief US economist at Jefferies. 'Looking back on it, it was definitely traumatic. It started to weigh heavily on me,' Macksoud told CNN in a phone interview. 'It felt hopeless.' The lengthy job search often takes a toll on new graduates. Worker confidence among Gen Zers in the United States recently tumbled to record lows, even lower than at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to LinkedIn. For Macksoud, the pressure was only amplified by the fact that, like many college graduates, she had a pile of student debt totaling about $70,000. After running into a dead end with government and NGO-based jobs, she eventually widened her search and landed a job working in business development for an IT and cybersecurity company. Macksoud urged today's graduates not to get disheartened by rejection. 'It's a numbers game. You have to change the mindset from being discouraged that you're not getting anywhere, to attacking it and being persistent,' she said. Finding a job could be even harder with the lightning-fast advancements made by next-generation AI models. Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI giant Anthropic, warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs and lift unemployment to 10% to 20% within the next one to five years. Amodei told CNN's Anderson Cooper last week that it's 'eerie' how much the public and lawmakers are unaware of what's happening with AI advancements in the workforce. 'We have to act now. We can't just sleepwalk into it,' the Anthropic CEO said. This entry-level job destruction may already be happening, at least in some corners of the labor market. For instance, Oxford Economics notes that employment in computer science and mathematics – two industries that are particularly vulnerable to AI disruption – has declined by 8% since 2022 for those aged 22 to 27. By contrast, the employment rate for those older than 27 in these industries has not changed much. 'AI is definitely displacing some of these lower-level jobs,' said Martin, the Oxford Economics economist. He added that he expects that AI will both kill and create some jobs, especially in the tech sector. Others argue that the AI employment fears are overdone. 'We don't see any evidence that this (slow hiring for entry-level jobs) is being driven by AI,' Kory Kantenga, head of economics at LinkedIn, told CNN in a phone interview. Kantenga noted that there have been dire predictions about technology killing jobs. 'When ATMs were introduced, there was a fear that bank tellers would be completely wiped out. But the reality is they evolved and adapted,' he said. The challenging jobs market for college graduates comes amid a broader debate over the value of a college degree, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and leave students saddled with overwhelming debt. The unemployment rate for young workers (ages 22 to 27) with a bachelor's degree or more is lower than it is for those without one, though that gap has narrowed in recent years, according to federal data. Kantenga said that while the cost of a four-year degree has gone up, many Americans decide it's still worth it because the earnings potential is higher and the unemployment rate is lower. 'At the end of the day, the rewards of having a degree still dwarf the costs,' he said. Economists say the challenging jobs market, and the risks around AI, put the onus on college students to choose where they focus wisely – for example, faster-growing parts of the workforce such as healthcare and education. 'Know where the momentum is and think about not just your first job, but your next step,' Kantenga said. 'If you land a high-paying first job, that's great, but not if you've got nowhere to go afterwards.' The challenging jobs market is weighing on parents, too. 'It's very frustrating,' said Rob Bastress, whose son graduated from University of California Irvine in December 2023 but has since struggled to find a job. 'You're pressuring your kids to get good grades, get into a good school to set them up for the right opportunities when they get out. And now those opportunities have kind of vanished.' Bastress, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works in tech, believes AI is part of the problem. 'I do think some jobs have been eliminated because of the automation that AI can do. And it's going to get tougher,' Bastress said, noting that some newer AI models won't even require human prompting to do tasks and make decisions. Gabriel Nash, a 24-year-old from Orlando, Florida, said he's applied to about 450 jobs in communications and video editing since graduating from the University of Central Florida in May 2024. None of those applications have panned out. Nash works part-time as a content creator by making gaming videos on YouTube. That work has given him enough money to pay for car insurance and other expenses, but not enough to move out from his parents' home. 'It's stressful,' Nash said. 'There is this social pressure of needing to get out and get a job. But if nobody is hiring, what am I supposed to do?'
Axios
29-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
AI is keeping recent college grads out of work
College graduates are having a tough time landing jobs this year, and AI may be playing a role, finds a new report that parses federal unemployment data. Why it matters: The analysis from Oxford Economics adds hard evidence to anecdotal reports — and scary warnings — that AI is displacing white-collar workers. What they're saying: "There's a lot of concern that AI is eliminating entry-level white-collar positions, and I think this is just some of the first evidence that we're seeing," says Matthew Martin, a senior economist with Oxford Economics, who wrote the report. How it works: While it's risen over the past few months, the unemployment rate in the U.S. has stayed relatively low. But the jobless rate for recent college grads has risen faster and is now higher than the overall rate. The Oxford Economics report studies the unemployment rate for those ages 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree, i.e., recent college grads. Looking at a three-month moving average, their jobless rate was close to 6% in April, compared to just above 4% for the overall workforce. Zoom out: Just last month, the unemployment gap between young workers with college degrees, and those without, was about 1.6 points. Compare that relatively slim difference to the gap of more than 8 points coming out of the 2008 financial crisis. That recession hit all kinds of non-college jobs, particularly in the construction business, while at the same time the 2010s tech boom created tons more jobs for those with college degrees. The gap blew out past 8 points again in 2020, when the pandemic hit and service sector jobs got wiped off the map. Restaurants, hotels and casinos let workers go, while white-collar jobs held steady thanks to Zoom. State of play: We're in a new world today. AI is eating tech roles and leading to what some are calling a white-collar recession. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pulling back on funding for universities and education. "A lot of these entry level, or kind of lower totem pole jobs, are likely being displaced as the workers above them become more productive," Martin says. Reality check: As long as technology has progressed, there have been worries that robots will come for people's jobs. And certainly new inventions have eliminated many kinds of roles (telephone operators, say, or typesetters). Typically, however, advancements in tech have created many more jobs, though usually of a different sort. The auto industry has been an incredible job creator compared to those horse and buggy gigs, for instance. Despite the scary scenario, in the long run, it's likely the labor market will adapt to AI advancements as well. The bottom line: For years, a computer science degree was viewed as a hot ticket to a great job. As that promise fades, the supply of tech grads will likely fall along with demand, Martin says. But that will take a while to play out.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rising number of college grads are unemployed, new research shows
Recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work, despite their higher education degrees, which usually give job-seekers a leg up in the labor market. That's according to a new report from Oxford Economics which shows that unemployed recent college grads account for 12% of an 85% rise in the national unemployment rate since mid-2023. That's a high number, given that this cohort only makes up 5% of the total labor force. What's more, the rate of unemployment among workers, ages 22 and 27, who have recently graduated from college, is nearing 6% —which is above the national unemployment rate of 4.2%. "People who have obtained a bachelor's degree or higher have a higher unemployment rate than national average, and this is the first time this has happened in the last 45 years of data," Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told CBS MoneyWatch. That's noteworthy, he said, because "those with higher educational attainment usually have better prospects overall than their peer with less." So why are recent college grads are having a tougher time finding work post-college than previous graduating classes did? While the report points to a couple of factors, it finds that much of the rising rate is being driven by industries where employers are slowing hiring. "The rise in the recent graduate unemployment rate is largely part of a mismatch between an oversupply of recent graduates in fields where business demand has waned," according to the report. That holds especially true in the tech industry, as more college students graduate with degrees in computer science and related fields than any other major. "Prospects for employment will remain minimal for these individuals, keeping the unemployment rate elevated in the near term," Oxford Economics researchers wrote in the report. Tech sector-centric Computer science is among the fastest-growing fields of study among undergrads, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but jobs in the sector are particularly vulnerable to replacement by automation. Recent advances in artificial intelligence also expose workers in the field to being rendered obsolete. "There's a mismatch between business demand and the labor supply overall," Martin said. "And it's very concentrated in the technology sector." The industry hired at a fast clip when the economy reopened post-pandemic, before pulling back. Those cuts are likely still affecting the current unemployment rate, according to Martin. "Some of it could be a normalization after the tech sector's hiring surge at the end of the pandemic around 2021," he said. "But there's also evidence that AI is starting to impact lower-level computer science gigs," he added. Experienced workers who graduated with computer science degrees but have racked up more than a few years of experience are faring fine, noted Martin. It's those who do the kind of lower-level, rote work that AI is already adept at, who are seeing a mismatch between the number of jobs available and the supply of workers seeking them. "Some of it might be businesses being productive with the workers they have and not wanting to increase costs overall by hiring. It could also be higher adoption rates of AI," Martin said. "At the moment, it looks to be a bit of both." Uncertainty slows hiring Economic uncertainty, driven largely by President Trump's aggressive, yet ever-changing tariff agenda, is also leading a number of businesses to press pause on growth and investment. Because of this, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates could continue to inch upward, according to Martin. "We are heading into a period where uncertainty is really high; the impact of tariffs is starting to bleed through, and businesses are facing higher input costs," he said. Although recent college graduates who have secured employment aren't being laid off at higher rates than the rest of the workforce, Martin doesn't expect things to get easier for young graduates on the hunt for employment, absent a surge in hiring by tech companies or mass exodus of workers from the labor force. "There is some softening in demand overall, but a lot of it is concentrated at the moment in recent college graduates, and we are looking for the unemployment rate to rise," he said. The "underemployment" effect When qualified workers with college degrees try and fail to find work in their desired field, they tend to continue seeking work, sometimes looking for a job in another sector, as opposed to withdrawing from the labor force, the report notes. That can lead t college-educated workers finding themselves "underemployed," or in roles where 50% of the workers who occupy them do not have a bachelor's degree or higher. This scenario can doom them for years to come: Underemployed workers tend to remain so for the rest of their careers, according to a report. Trump delivers Memorial Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery Trump reverses course on EU tariffs; Republicans eye sanctions on Russia SpaceX readies 9th Starship test flight after last 2 broke apart
