For most of the past two decades, the unemployment rate for American workers with a bachelor's degree and the rate for workers without one moved in step. Both rose in a recession and both fell in a recovery, with a steady gap between them. In 2026 the two lines came apart, and the one heading down belongs to the people without the degree.
That is the finding behind a run of coverage in September 2026, starting with a Wall Street Journal report built on an analysis by the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-market research group. Unemployment among workers aged 22 to 34 who never finished college has rarely been lower in recent decades. Over the same stretch, college graduates have been having one of their worst hiring markets in years.
What the numbers actually say
Start with the thing that has not changed, because the headlines tend to skip it. On an absolute basis, a degree still comes with a lower unemployment rate. The Journal's analysis of Labor Department figures puts unemployment for degree-holders in their prime working years, 25 to 54, at an average of 2.7% for the twelve months ending in July, against 3.6% for workers with some college and 4.7% for those with a high-school diploma only.
What changed is the direction of travel. The gap is closing from both ends, and for younger workers specifically it has closed far enough that the usual advice about waiting out a bad market no longer reads the same way for both groups.
The clearest measurement of the graduate side comes from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, which works from ADP payroll records covering millions of workers across more than 730 occupations. Their Canaries project, run by Erik Brynjolfsson and colleagues, tracks employment for 22 to 25 year olds in the occupations most exposed to AI against their peers in less exposed ones. In their August 2026 update, employment for that young, highly exposed group sits about 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with the comparison group. Software engineering, marketing and customer support are the occupations doing most of the work in that number, and all three are places a graduate would have expected to start.
Why the gap opened
Four pressures arrived within a few years of each other, and they push in the same direction.
- Retirements in the trades. The people who wire buildings, weld, fix industrial machinery and run HVAC systems skew older than the workforce as a whole, and the cohort leaving is larger than the cohort arriving. Demand for the work did not fall with them.
- Slower immigration. Construction, food processing and a range of manual occupations have leaned on immigrant labor for decades. Reduced inflows tighten those payrolls quickly, because there is no domestic reserve of trained replacements sitting idle.
- AI absorbing entry-level office work. The tasks that used to be handed to a new graduate in their first year, drafting, summarizing, first-pass research and basic code, are the tasks generative tools do acceptably well. Employers have responded by hiring fewer juniors rather than by hiring juniors who use the tools.
- Record degree production. The United States is awarding more bachelor's degrees than ever into a white-collar market that is taking fewer new entrants. Supply went up as demand went down.
Worth keeping in proportion: about 38.6% of Americans aged 25 and over held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2024, per the Census Bureau's educational attainment release. Roughly three in five working-age adults do not have one. The group this market favors is not a niche.
Where the hiring actually is
“Trades are booming” is the version of this story that circulates, and it is true in a specific way that is worth reading precisely, because the growth rates and the number of openings are different measurements and people confuse them constantly.
Read that chart twice. Wind turbine service technician is the fastest-growing occupation in the country at 49.9%, and it is also small, so the percentage is a poor guide to how many jobs exist. Electricians grow at a less dramatic 9%, but that works out to roughly 81,000 openings every year at a median wage of $62,350. If you want a job rather than a statistic, the openings column is the one to read.
- Industrial machinery mechanics and millwrights, about 13% growth and roughly 54,200 openings a year. Maintenance work on factory and warehouse equipment, largely learned on the job.
- Electricians, 9% and about 81,000 openings a year, median $62,350. Data center and grid work is a large part of why.
- Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics, 8% and about 40,100 openings a year, median $59,810.
- Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, 4% growth, median $59,880. Slower growth, but a large existing base means steady replacement hiring.
All occupations together are projected to grow about 3% over the same decade, which is the line all of these sit above. Healthcare support, transport and logistics, and technical roles in manufacturing are seeing similar pressure without the same coverage. For live openings rather than projections, our jobs board keeps a list of verified roles whose own adverts name no degree requirement.
The catch nobody puts in the headline
Since 2022 a long list of large employers and several state governments have announced that they no longer require a four-year degree. Maryland went first among the states in March 2022. Utah followed, removing the requirement from 98% of its 1,080 classified executive-branch jobs. Pennsylvania's governor signed an executive order in January 2023 covering roughly 92% of state positions, directing agencies to lead postings with skills and experience instead. Massachusetts did the same across most state roles.
The private-sector version of this has been studied, and the result deserves more attention than the announcements got. In February 2024 the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School published Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice, which followed more than 11,300 roles at large firms for at least a year before and after the degree requirement came off the posting.
- The change reached about 97,000 workers out of roughly 77 million hires a year, which is fewer than 1 in 700.
- For every 100 jobs that dropped a degree requirement, fewer than four additional non-graduates were actually hired.
- About 45% of the companies that announced a change hired no differently afterwards.
- 37% did follow through, raising the share of workers without degrees by close to 20%. Another 18% made early gains and slid back.
So the posting changed more often than the hiring did. Those employers are still worth applying to, since 37% of them did follow through. What the study tells you is where the obstacle usually sits, and it is the automated screen rather than the recruiter's judgment.
What this means for your résumé
Most résumé advice, and most résumé templates, assume a degree exists and put it near the top. Applied to someone without one, that layout opens the document with the weakest thing about the candidate and buries the strongest. Four changes fix most of it.
1. Do not keep an education section that has nothing in it
An Education heading followed by a high school and a year draws the eye to exactly the field you would rather nobody dwelt on. Replace the heading with what you do have: Licenses and certifications, Technical training, or Apprenticeship. A journeyman card, a CDL, an EPA 608, a CompTIA cert, an OSHA 30 or a completed apprenticeship are all credentials, and they are more specific to the job than most degrees are. If you attended college without finishing, name the institution and the coursework completed without inventing a completion date. Our guide to reframing a résumé without lying on it covers where that line sits.
2. Move proof of the work to the top
With no degree to lead on, the first third of the page has to carry evidence. A short summary naming the trade, the years, the license and the equipment, then experience. Recruiters reading for a skilled role are looking for systems you have worked on and scale you have worked at, not adjectives.
Hardworking and reliable professional with strong attention to detail seeking a position where I can grow.
Journeyman electrician, 8 years commercial. Licensed in TX and NM. Conduit, switchgear up to 480V, and two data center fit-outs totaling 180,000 sq ft.
3. Expect the degree question to be asked somewhere other than the résumé
This is the part that catches people out. An employer can remove “bachelor's degree required” from a job advert and still have a knockout question in the application form asking whether you hold one, because the advert and the applicant tracking system are edited by different people at different times. If the form asks, answer it accurately. If there is a free-text box nearby, that is where the equivalent training goes. Our piece on what ATS résumé checkers actually check explains which fields the software reads and which it ignores.
4. Use the employer's own vocabulary
Trade and technical postings are dense with exact terms, and the exact term matters more here than in office roles because the software is matching strings rather than meaning. A posting that says NEC, PLC troubleshooting and preventive maintenance wants those words. Electrical code knowledge, automation experience and upkeep do not match them. Pull the terms from the posting itself, which is the method in our guide to getting keywords out of a job description.
If you are switching into a trade from an office job
Some of the people reading this are moving the other way: a laid-off marketing coordinator or support agent looking at an apprenticeship. Three practical notes.
- Apprenticeships pay from day one and the application looks nothing like a job application. Many go through a joint apprenticeship committee or a union local with fixed intake windows, an aptitude test and an interview panel. Missing the window costs you a year, so find the intake dates before you write anything.
- Your office experience is worth listing, briefly. Reliability, a clean driving record, scheduling and customer-facing work are all things a contractor cares about. Two lines, not half a page.
- Do not hide the change of direction. A résumé that pretends the last six years did not happen reads worse than one that explains the move in a sentence. The same applies to any break in the record, which our guide to employment gaps deals with directly.
How long this lasts
Nobody knows, and anyone giving you a date is guessing. The retirement wave has years left in it and infrastructure and data center construction is contracted well ahead, so the demand side looks durable for a while. The graduate side is harder to call, because it depends on whether employers who stopped hiring juniors resume once they work out that a pipeline with no bottom eventually has no middle.
What is safe to act on now: the hiring is real, the openings are concentrated in occupations you can enter through an apprenticeship or a license rather than four years of tuition, and the employers doing that hiring screen applications with the same software everyone else uses. The advantage in this market is only worth having if the document gets through.
See what a recruiter's software sees
Paste the posting and your résumé, and find out which of the employer's terms are missing before you send it. Free to run.
Frequently asked questions
Is the job market really better without a college degree right now?
For younger workers, it is unusually good by recent standards. An analysis by the Burning Glass Institute reported in September 2026 found unemployment among 22 to 34 year olds who never finished college near its lowest point in recent decades, while college graduates were having one of their worst hiring markets in years. Degree-holders still have a lower unemployment rate overall, averaging 2.7% for prime-age workers against 4.7% for those with a high-school diploma only. What changed is the direction each group is moving in, not the ranking.
What jobs pay well without a degree in 2026?
Electricians have a median annual wage of $62,350 with roughly 81,000 openings a year, plumbers and pipefitters $59,880, and heating and air conditioning mechanics $59,810 with about 40,100 openings a year, all on May 2024 BLS medians. Industrial machinery mechanics are projected to grow about 13% through 2034 with around 54,200 openings a year. These are entered through apprenticeships or licenses rather than a bachelor's degree, and apprenticeships pay while you train.
Why are college graduates struggling to find jobs?
Mostly because the entry-level work is thinning out. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using ADP payroll data across more than 730 occupations, found that employment for 22 to 25 year olds in the occupations most exposed to AI sits about 19% below where it would be had it tracked their peers in less exposed occupations. Software engineering, marketing and customer support account for much of it. Experienced workers in those same fields have not seen the same drop, so this is specifically a first-job problem.
Do employers actually hire people without degrees when they drop the requirement?
Less often than the announcements suggest. The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School tracked more than 11,300 roles at large firms and found that removing a degree requirement produced fewer than four extra non-graduate hires per 100 such jobs, reaching about 97,000 workers out of roughly 77 million annual hires. Around 45% of companies that announced a change hired no differently afterwards. About 37% did follow through, so it is worth applying, just not worth assuming the posting reflects the practice.
What should I put on a resume if I do not have a degree?
Replace the education section with what you actually hold: licenses, certifications, apprenticeship, or technical training. A journeyman card, CDL, EPA 608, OSHA 30 or CompTIA certificate is more specific to the job than most degrees. Lead the document with a summary naming the trade, the years, the license and the equipment you have worked on, then experience. If you attended college without finishing, list the institution and completed coursework without implying a completion date.
Will an ATS reject my resume if I have no degree?
The résumé parser itself does not reject anyone. What filters people out is a knockout question in the application form asking whether you hold a degree, and that question sometimes survives on forms whose job adverts no longer mention a degree at all. Answer it accurately and use any adjacent free-text field to name equivalent training. Running your résumé and the posting through an ATS score check first will show you which of the employer's required terms you are missing.
Which states have dropped degree requirements for government jobs?
Maryland went first in March 2022. Utah removed the requirement from 98% of its 1,080 classified executive-branch positions, Pennsylvania's governor signed an executive order in January 2023 covering roughly 92% of state jobs and directing agencies to list skills and experience instead, and Massachusetts did the same across most state roles. More than twenty states have made some version of the change, and it has come from governors of both parties.
Is it too late to start an apprenticeship in my thirties or forties?
No, and career changers are a normal part of intake. Apprenticeships pay from the first day rather than charging tuition, which is what makes the switch financially possible at that age. The practical constraint is timing: many programs run through a joint apprenticeship committee or union local with fixed intake windows, an aptitude test and an interview panel, so find the application dates before you do anything else. Missing a window usually costs a full year.