Across the United States, the 2025 graduate job outlook reflects a shift from the expansion seen in 2024 toward a more cautious and uneven global market, according to the Early Careers Hiring Benchmark Report from Hirevue.
The United States shows modest stabilization and a sense of fragile optimism, with employers forecasting small gains or declines depending on sector.
U.S. employers, for example, project a 1.6% hiring increase for the Class of 2026 vs. 2025.
“We’re seeing a critical, non-negotiable shift toward skills-based hiring, a strategy that is particularly crucial in the high-volume, low-growth early careers market. For this specific population, traditional proxies like résumés summarizing past experiences hold minimal predictive power, as candidates often lack a substantive professional history to review. Therefore, leveraging robust, science-backed assessments that objectively measure and validate core skills and competencies is the only reliable way to ensure a fair and effective selection process for the next generation of talent,” says Dr. Mike Hudy, chief science officer, Hirevue.
Key takeaways:
· In 2024, the global story was of growth or stability, with vacancies taking only a slight dip in the United States. In 2025, the United States saw low single-digit growth.
· As in 2024, professional services, finance, digital/IT, energy, engineering, and other traditional industries remain bright for recruitment across regions.
· In the United States, the Top 5 industries increasing graduate recruitment in 2026 are professional services, engineering, construction, finance and real estate, and management consulting.
· U.S. employers are navigating softer hiring forecasts, significantly higher application volumes, and rising complexity in both candidate behavior and technology use. Top themes are skills-based hiring is here to stay; AI has moved from experiment to infrastructure; and candidate experience is under pressure.
· 2025 data emphasizes that acceptance rates have increased from 68.8% to 78.3%. Renege rates have also increased from 7.6% to 10%.
· Average time from first interview to offer/rejection is 27.3 days, up from 25.1 in 2023.
· Reneges are also rising. U.S. reneges on full-time offers are up from 7.6% to 10% in the past two years.
· Students are also deciding faster—9 days on average to accept, down from 11.
· 22% of employers report using AI, primarily for résumé screening, scheduling, and sourcing tasks rather than candidate interactions. Another 22% expect to start using AI within a year.
· 65.5% use virtual recruiting methods, and 80.5% of those who use AI in recruiting use video interviewing for initial screening.
· 79% of entry-level jobs still require a bachelor’s degree, and nearly 70% of employers say they are using skills-based hiring. Employers look to the degree as an indicator of skills and are de-emphasizing GPA as a screening tool.
· More than one-quarter of organizations have discussed relaxing degree requirements, but not because they distrust degrees but instead because they want to broaden talent pipelines based on skills.
· Skills-based hiring has moved from emerging to embedded, with 70% of U.S. employers reporting skills-based practices.
