Gen Z graduates are blaming AI for their unemployment woes when they should be looking somewhere else

While AI companies sow anxiety around their technologies, there’s evidence elsewhere of different economic factors actually driving employment challenges.

While recent graduates kicked off their summer of potential unemployment by booing commencement speakers extolling the benefits of AI, they may have to look elsewhere to blame for those low hire rates. One top economist argued the generation has reasons beyond just the technology to blame for the weak job market they are inheriting, and the proof is simply because today’s unemployment data changed little after the introduction of today’s popular AI tools.

“Many have been quick to blame the gap on ChatGPT’s November 2022 release and the broader rise of AI,” Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok said in a recent blog post. “But the AI-exposed sectors where these graduates cluster are also the most sensitive to Fed tightening, trade-war uncertainty, and slowing immigration, so the entry-level squeeze is far more likely a product of the general low-hire, low-fire labor market than of a technology that companies had barely begun to deploy when the gap emerged.”

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has held stubbornly at 5.6%, about the same as it was a year ago. Recent graduate unemployment is considerably higher than the 4.2% unemployment rate for all workers, which is already its highest in four years, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. 

Slok noted a divergence in unemployment rates between Gen Z graduates and the general population beginning around April 2022, about six months before ChatGPT’s release, leading him to conclude that other factors must be behind the generation’s widening unemployment.

He explained that while unemployment for college graduates and recent college graduates has exceeded the broader unemployment rate, the gap between these numbers has remained stable, both prior to and after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT nearly four years ago. 

The Apollo economist’s observation sheds light on a disconnect Gen Z is facing as it enters the workforce: AI is stirring anxiety and resentment, despite young people facing a slew of economic challenges that is actually making their job search an uphill battle.

Where does Gen Z’s mismatched AI anxiety come from? 

Gen Zers have made their attitude toward AI clear: According to an iCIMS Workforce Report from January, more than half (51%) of Gen Z feel AI poses the greatest threat to their job security. It appears part of this anxiety comes from how companies are talking about AI: Companies like Meta are pushing employees to deploy more AI tools, but at the same time are citing the technology as reasons behind layoffs and hiring reductions. Glassdoor’s 2026 Worklife Trends Midyear Check-In found this rhetoric is taking a toll on workers, with 53% of discussions about AI on the platform being negative and 43% positive, compared with last year, when 41% were negative and 55% positive.

“The hype around AI and rapidly-changing capabilities may be stoking anxiety for workers across many different occupations and industries, who fear that their jobs may be safe from AI automation right now but may not be in a few years,” the report said.

But as anxiety mounts, data on the true impact of AI on the workforce remains muddied: A first-of-its-kind Stanford study published last year reified this fear, finding AI had a “significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the U.S. labor market,” including a 13% relative decline in early-career worker employment. However, Yale Budget Lab has found no meaningful changes in churn or length of unemployment in jobs with both high or no exposure to AI, indicating that if AI-related labor changes are happening, it’s not at a large enough scale for data to pick up on it.

Experts like Cal Newport, a computer scientist and author of the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, blame tech leaders for stoking this AI-related anxiety through “doom trolling,” or catastrophizing the impacts of AI in public forums. In a New York Times op-ed published last week, he posited that tech companies are engaging in doom trolling perhaps to amplify the power of their technologies ahead of key IPOs or to recruit talent. However, he warned, it’s coming at the expense of the mental wellness of the population trying to make sense of how this technology will affect them.

“This could have been a period of hopeful innovation, but instead our emotions are being manipulated by Silicon Valley’s self-serving and morally untenable addiction to doom trolling,” he said. “This communication strategy has to stop. The harm it’s causing to the public’s mental health has arguably outweighed the benefits that AI has so far delivered.”

What’s actually causing Gen Z’s employment nightmare?

Economists including Apollo’s Slok have argued that while data on AI’s true labor impact is cloudy, there’s plenty of salient reasons why Gen Z might have trouble finding a job. He cited a February analysis he conducted looking at AI-sensitive jobs and found that since late 2022, those same high-exposure industries—such as warehousing and storage, payroll services, and transportation support roles—were also impacted by trade uncertainty, a slowdown in immigration-driven labor supply, and a contractionary monetary policy. Employment in jobs most exposed to AI was also more highly correlated to when the Federal Reserve began hiking rates in early 2022, making it challenging to ascertain if AI is the driving force behind labor challenges.

“The slowdown in employment in AI-exposed sectors is likely driven by some combination of all these factors rather than only AI,” Slok wrote.

Economists have indeed warned of trade and immigration policies’ impact on hiring. Pantheon Macroeconomics analysts Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen argued in a note last year that tariffs were suppressing wage growth as companies look to claw back shrinking margins as a result of more import taxes. While 2026 jobs numbers have been stronger than the year before, weak hiring rates have been a through line, and this mentality among companies to preserve margins may extend to hiring.

“Oftentimes when there is heightened uncertainty, it’s just difficult for businesses and people to make decisions in real time,” Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told Fortune last year. “And so that slows down employment. It slows down all those processes.”

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has had a similar impact on U.S. employment. A National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) policy brief published earlier this year found falling labor force participation among U.S.-born workers age 16 and older, leading economists to conclude that not only is the immigrant workforce shrinking, but the absence of immigrant workers is also leaving U.S. companies with fewer resources to grow business and increase hiring of domestic-born workers.

“Most economic research shows that immigration increases employment opportunities for the U.S.-born, so it would not be surprising if reducing immigration harms American workers,” labor economist and NFAP senior fellow Mark Regets said in the report.

Altogether, these factors create a low-hire, low-fire job market, which disproportionately impacts Gen Z. A Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis report published this week found that the employment-to-population ratio between 16- to 24-year-olds and 25- to 64-year olds has grown since 2023, suggesting when hiring slows, young people who rely on new job openings are the most impacted.

“At times during the business cycle, the labor market can appear strong on the surface while becoming much less hospitable to new entrants, who are often young workers,” Fed researchers wrote.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com