Paul Krugman Substack

What you need to know: What we’re looking at now isn’t the worst job market college graduates have ever seen. It is, however, the worst such market compared with workers in general that we’ve ever seen, by a large margin. Nobody knows for sure why this is happening, but it’s not a good omen. And the recent graduates themselves will be hurt, not just in the near term, but for the rest of their lives.

So what does a business do in the face of this kind of uncertainty? It tries to avoid making commitments that it may soon regret.

And hiring recent college graduates is a significant commitment. Whatever their formal training, young people need to acquire real-world experience to be effective in their new jobs. Employers need to be willing to spend time and money while new hires gain this experience. And in this uncertain environment, that’s not a commitment employers are willing to make. They may hold on to their existing workers, at least for now, but they won’t hire.