One in Four Unemployed Americans Has a College Degree, Most Ever

Americans with four-year college degrees now comprise a record 25% of total unemployment, underscoring a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring this year.

Government-shutdown delayed monthly figures published Thursday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree-holders rose to 2.8% in September, up a half-percentage point from a year earlier. Other levels of education, by contrast, registered little or no increase over the same period.

There were more than 1.9 million Americans aged 25 and over with at least a bachelor’s degree who were unemployed in September — one in four ...