Young and unemployed? Remote work, not AI, may be the problem, study finds

The rise of remote work since the pandemic has made businesses more reluctant to hire young, inexperienced workers and is the key driver of higher unemployment rates for recent college graduates, a study released Monday has found.

The study, by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, compared occupations that can be done remotely — such as software development — with those that are done in person, such as nursing. The study finds that the unemployment rate among young college graduates in “remotable” jobs rose by about 1 percentage point from 2017-2019 to 2022-2024.

Yet for older workers in those fields — those aged 29 and over — the jobless rate declined slightly, leading to a notably higher unemployment rate for younger college graduates in remotable occupations compared with older workers.

Read more from the Associated Press.