Young NYers with college degrees face higher unemployment rate than those without for first time in decades

Big Apple college-educated residents have a higher unemployment rate than their less-educated peers for the first time in more than a decade, according to labor statistics highlighted by the city comptroller — who suggested AI might be to blame.New Yorkers aged 22 to 27 with college degrees hit 7.3% unemployment in March 2026 — compared to a 7.1% rate for Gothamites in the same age bracket with no higher education, Comptroller Mark Levine said in a Sunday post on X.Unemployment among college-educated young New Yorkers has been creeping steadily upwards since the spring of 2024, while plummeting among those without degrees since the fall of that year, according to the data compiled by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.It was the first time in at least 15 years — since January 2011 — that young New Yorkers with college degrees were unemployed at higher rates than those without degrees, according to a graphic shared by Levine.

And the current shift is significant: in 2011, unemployment rates for those without degrees were nearly double, at 13.6% compared to 7.3%.“One more possible sign that AI is already impacting employment in NYC,” Levine suggested on X.“How long do we wait before we start treating this as real?” he said, adding it was the “first time in decades” that city-dwellers with college degrees were worse off in the job market than those without.

Levine’s figures came from a May report his office released where he cautioned that New York was “sleepwalking into the age of AI.”That report warned AI could cost the Big Apple about 300,000 jobs and $14 billion in tax dollars — gutting the local economy for both workers and the city alike.New York’s high concentration of white collar jobs are what makes the city extremely vulnerable to AI-driven job loss, according to the report.The comptroller’s office, citing figures Anthropic, found a high-concentration of AI usage among computer and mathematical-based jobs in the city.

“I se...