Is underemployment for young US college grads 70%, as FL governor candidate James Fishback says?

Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback has focused much of his campaign on the concerns of his biggest supporters: young voters.

The 31-year-old hedge fund manager from Davie, Fla., tapped into college students' insecurities about the job market during a March 11 University of Florida speech.

"The Republican party is leaving us behind at a time when our country is being auctioned off, when youth underemployment for college grads is 70%," Fishback said.

For a college graduate, underemployment generally means working in a job that doesn’t typically require a college degree, working in a part-time position because full-time, skills-based positions were inaccessible or being jobless. 

We found no evidence that U.S. youth underemployment is in the vicinity of 70%. The most reliable data shows the rate is about 42%, with no significant swings in the last several years. 

Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said underemployment estimates for recent graduates are "far lower" than Fishback’s figure.

"Young adults with a four-year degree from an accredited U.S. institution" are less likely to be out of the labor force and searching for work compared with peers who didn’t complete college, Burtless said.

PolitiFact received no reply from Fishback’s campaign.

What is the U.S. underemployment rate for college graduates?

Although it’s a relatively new labor force statistic, the underemployment rate for all adults has stayed fairly steady since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking it in 1994, with bigger upward swings during recessions. 

Since the mid-1990s, 5.4 million people on average have been categorized as underemployed. The figure rose to more than 9 million during the 2008 Great Recession and 10 million during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Federal Reserve of New York report found that 42.5% of recent college graduates were underemployed as of December 2025. The study used census data and considered recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The rate has fluctuated slightly since 2008, ranging from 38% to 48%, the study found. Underemployment rates were highest for graduates with degrees in criminal justice and performing arts.
 

Other studies show varying estimates, but are also lower than Fishback’s stat. 

One 2024 report found that 52% of graduates with bachelor’s degrees were underemployed a year after graduation and about 45% were underemployed a decade after graduation. Researchers used career histories of millions of bachelor-degree graduates, analyzing the Class of 2012’s employment patterns through 2022. 

Andrew Hanson, senior director at Strada Education Foundation and the report’s lead author, said the rate has been relatively stable.

"When looking at recent college graduates with bachelors degrees," Hanson said, "it’s been around 40% historically, going up and down within about 10 percentage points."

A graduate’s major was the biggest predictor in underemployment, Hanson’s research found, followed by internship participation, which decreased the odds of underemployment by nearly 50%. 

Studies by Georgetown University, the Urban Institute and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity offer underemployment estimates ranging from 25% to 50%, depending on methodology and the population analyzed. None came close to 70%.

Our ruling

Fishback said youth underemployment for college graduates is 70% nationwide.

Data doesn’t support this. The Federal Reserve of New York found that about 42.5% of recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 were underemployed as of December 2025, with the rate ranging from 38% to 48% since 2008.

Other studies offer a range of estimates, but none came close to 70%.

We rate his claim False.

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.