Computer science grads face a brutal job market as AI reshapes entry-level work

🎯 Impact Sentiment: Concerning

📋 Summary

• An Associated Press analysis puts the jobless rate for recent computer science and computer engineering graduates at around 7.1% — higher than for graduates in philosophy, art history and ethnic studies.
• Stanford's Digital Economy Lab finds employment for workers in their early 20s in AI-exposed occupations such as software development is 19% below trend, a decline the U.S. Census Bureau likened to graduating into a large recession.
• After a decade in which recent CS and computer engineering graduates tripled to about 362,000 in 2024, computer and information science enrollment at four-year institutions has fallen 8.4%; the Computing Research Association is urging industry to invest in entry-level workers.
• Hiring is shifting toward smaller businesses that need help adopting AI, which often cannot sponsor H-1B visas — a particular hurdle for international students as the administration seeks to raise the visa fee to over $100,000.

💡 JR Insights

• 💼 Implication: A computer science degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket; demand is moving toward people who can oversee AI tools and critically evaluate their output.
• 🚨 Risk: New graduates — especially international students who need visa sponsorship — face long searches, heavy churn and interviews increasingly screened by AI bots.
• ✨ Takeaway: Widen your search to non-tech and smaller firms adopting AI, and lead with concrete projects that show you can deploy, test and validate AI tools for a business problem.