Small businesses are planning to hire fewer recent college graduates than they did in 2025, making it likely harder for this cohort to find entry-level jobs.

In our recent national survey, we found that small businesses are 30% more likely than larger employers to say they are not hiring recent college graduates in 2026. About 1 in 5 small-business employers said they do not plan to hire college graduates or expect to hire fewer than they did last year.

This would be the largest anticipated decrease in small businesses hiring new graduates in more than a decade.

Small businesses are generally those with fewer than 500 employees, based on standards from the U.S. Census Bureau and federal labor data.

This slowdown is happening nationwide and is affecting early-career hiring for people graduating from both college and graduate programs – and is more pronounced for people with graduate degrees.

Nearly 40% of small businesses also said they do not plan to hire, or are cutting back on hiring, recent grads who don’t have a master’s of business administration. Almost 60% said the same for people with other professional degrees.

National data shows the same trend. Only 56% of small businesses are hiring or trying to hire anyone at all, according to October 2025 findings by the........

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