From Rugby Ball to Human Centipede: The New Anatomy of Graduate Employment

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Graduation ceremonies are designed to make everyone look equal. Students wear the same gowns, receive certificates of the same size and listen to the same speeches about possibility. For a few hours, the university presents the future as an open field.

The sorting begins almost immediately afterwards.

Some graduates enter investment banks, technology companies, consulting firms, government schemes or professional training programmes. Others accept temporary contracts, administrative positions, sales jobs or roles that barely require the degrees they have spent years obtaining. A third group continues studying -not always because another qualification is necessary, but because postgraduate education offers a respectable place to wait.

The older image of graduate employment resembled a rugby ball: narrow at the top and bottom, but broad in the middle. A small group entered highly paid elite professions; a smaller group struggled seriously; most graduates were expected to find reasonably secure, middle-income work with room for advancement.

This was never a perfect description of reality. Class, race, family connections and university prestige always shaped access to good jobs. Nevertheless, the rugby-ball model represented a believable social bargain: study hard, obtain a degree and enter the professional middle.

Today, the shape increasingly resembles a pyramid. There is a narrow group of graduates at the top, a thinner professional middle and a widening base of workers in insecure, poorly matched or relatively low-paid employment.

But even the pyramid may be too tidy a metaphor.

The modern graduate labour market sometimes looks more like a human centipede.

A Deliberately Ugly Metaphor

The image is grotesque, but so is the mechanism it describes.

When a highly competitive candidate fails to obtain an elite position, that person does not disappear from the labour market. They apply for the next tier of jobs. Candidates who might previously have secured those positions are then pushed one tier lower. They, in turn, compete for jobs that once went to less academically qualified applicants.

What the top layer rejects becomes the ambition of the layer below.

A graduate from an elite university who misses investment banking may enter commercial banking. A candidate displaced from commercial banking may accept a back-office operations role. Another graduate may then move into general administration, recruitment, retail management or customer service. Eventually, degree holders begin competing directly for positions that never previously required university education.

Economists describe parts of this process as occupational downgrading, crowding or “bumping down”. Recent research on higher-education expansion found evidence that increased competition pushes lower-ranked graduates in the labour queue into non-graduate jobs, with some of the pressure then spilling over to medium-skilled workers.

The human-centipede metaphor therefore captures something that a pyramid does not. A pyramid is static: every person simply occupies a fixed level. The present labour market is dynamic. Disappointment travels downward.

Employment Without Graduate Employment

The problem is not necessarily that graduates cannot find any work. It is that a growing number cannot find work that matches their education, expectations or earning needs.

In the United States, the unemployment rate for recent university graduates remained around 5.6% in the second quarter of 2026. More significantly, the underemployment rate—the proportion working in occupations that typically do not require a degree -reached 42%.

This distinction matters. A graduate delivering food, working at a reception desk or processing routine customer enquiries may be officially employed. The unemployment statistics record a success. But the graduate may not be using the skills acquired at university, building relevant professional experience or earning enough to justify the cost of the degree.

Underemployment is not necessarily temporary. Research summarised by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that graduates who begin their careers in non-degree positions frequently remain underemployed years later. Early jobs shape later résumés, professional networks and access to training. A weak first step can therefore become a long-term career scar rather than a short transitional period.

This is why apparently positive hiring statistics can coexist with widespread anxiety. The National Association of Colleges and Employers projected that employers would hire 5.6% more members of the Class of 2026, but the increase was uneven across industries and organisations. At the same time, 45% of surveyed employers described the graduate job market as merely “fair”.

The number of jobs may be rising without the middle of the labour market becoming broader. Hiring can increase while job quality, career relevance and bargaining power deteriorate.

Hong Kong shows a similar tension. Full-time vacancies advertised for university graduates reportedly fell by 14.1% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, even as the median advertised starting salary edged up to HK$20,000. Fewer employers were recruiting, but those still hiring could offer slightly higher salaries to the candidates they most wanted.

That is not a rugby ball. It is selective concentration.

The Degree Has Become an Entry Ticket, Not a Winning Ticket

The expansion of higher education created enormous social benefits. More people gained access to professional knowledge, intellectual development and careers that were once restricted to a small elite.

But the number of attractive graduate jobs did not always expand at the same speed as the number of graduates.

When degrees are scarce, a degree distinguishes its holder. When degrees become common, employers begin using additional filters: university ranking, internships, extracurricular leadership, technical certificates, international experience, personal referrals and evidence of commercial awareness.

The degree remains necessary, but is no longer sufficient.

Despite years of discussion about “skills-first” recruitment, 19.3% of American job advertisements on Indeed required at least a bachelor’s degree in November 2025, up from 16.6% two years earlier. The increase was not explained only by changes in the types of jobs being advertised; degree requirements were also rising within occupations.

This creates a credential treadmill. Students respond to competition by accumulating more signals: another internship, another certificate, another case competition, another postgraduate degree. Yet when everyone adds the same credential, its ability to distinguish one applicant declines.

The result is not that education becomes worthless. It becomes positional. Its value increasingly depends on what everyone else possesses.

A bachelor’s degree is no longer simply evidence that a person can perform a job. It is also a ticket allowing that person to enter a queue. Where the person stands in that queue may depend on university reputation, family resources, previous work experience, geography and social connections as much as academic ability.

Employers No Longer Want to Train Beginners

The traditional entry-level job contained an implicit exchange. A young employee arrived with limited practical experience, accepted a relatively modest salary and received training, supervision and gradual responsibility.

Many employers now want the finished product without paying for the production process.

Job advertisements labelled “entry level” ask for prior internships, industry knowledge, advanced software skills and evidence that the candidate can contribute immediately. Training costs have quietly shifted from companies to students. The student must obtain experience before being allowed to obtain experience.

This particularly benefits graduates whose families can subsidise unpaid internships, housing in expensive cities, professional clothing, networking events and months of job searching. A wealthier graduate can wait for the right opportunity. A poorer graduate may need to accept the first available salary.

The official competition may appear meritocratic, but the ability to remain in the competition is not equally distributed.

Remote and hybrid work have added another difficulty. Research by economists associated with the New York Fed estimated that the rise of remote work could explain 64% of the recent increase in unemployment among young university graduates. The argument is not that remote work destroys jobs directly, but that managers find it harder to train and supervise inexperienced employees from a distance. Firms may therefore prefer an experienced worker who can operate independently.

The very flexibility that benefits established professionals can close the door on beginners.

AI Is Removing Some of the Training Ground

Artificial intelligence is not the sole explanation for the difficult graduate market. The rise in young-graduate unemployment began before generative AI became widely used, and remote work, slower corporate hiring, higher interest rates and economic uncertainty also matter. The OECD notes that the relative unemployment risk facing young university graduates had already been increasing before the spread of generative AI.

Nevertheless, AI may intensify the problem by automating tasks that traditionally served as training grounds.

Junior employees once began by summarising documents, producing first drafts, conducting basic research, cleaning spreadsheets, preparing simple presentations or writing routine code. These tasks were not glamorous, but they allowed beginners to observe how organisations worked and gradually develop judgement.

If AI performs more of this basic work, firms may require fewer junior workers while continuing to employ experienced professionals who can supervise systems, interpret outputs and take responsibility for decisions.

A 2026 U.S. Census Bureau working paper found that graduates from the most AI-exposed fields experienced a five-percentage-point decline in the likelihood of initial employment after the arrival of widely available generative AI. Their initial quarterly earnings also declined by 13%, partly because some moved into lower-paying sectors such as retail and restaurants.

This does not mean AI will permanently eliminate graduate employment. It may eventually create new roles and allow young workers to become productive more quickly. But during the transition, companies may remove junior tasks before designing new ways to train junior people.

The ladder is not necessarily disappearing from the top. It is losing its lowest rungs.

The New Inequality Is the Ability to Wait

The graduate labour market is often discussed as a competition of talent. Increasingly, it is also a competition of endurance.

Who can complete three internships before graduation? Who can relocate to London, New York, Hong Kong or Singapore without a guaranteed salary? Who can spend six months applying for jobs? Who can accept a low-paid position at a prestigious organisation because the brand may pay off later? Who can pursue a master’s degree when the first degree does not produce the expected outcome?

The advantage belongs not only to the most capable candidate, but also to the candidate with the longest financial runway.

This transforms unemployment and underemployment from individual setbacks into mechanisms of class reproduction. Students from well-connected families can continue climbing after a poor first result. Those with fewer resources are more likely to accept mismatched work, and that first mismatch can shape every application that follows.

The human centipede is therefore not simply a hierarchy of intelligence. It is a chain of unequal fallback options.

At the top, failure may mean accepting a slightly less prestigious professional job. Further down, failure may mean abandoning the intended career entirely.

A Degree Still Matters - But Differently

It would be wrong to conclude that university education has no value. Graduates continue, on average, to earn more than non-graduates, and many professions genuinely require advanced education.

However, the return depends increasingly on whether the graduate secures a job that actually uses the qualification. Research cited by the St. Louis Fed estimated that a recent graduate in a degree-level occupation earns substantially more than a high-school graduate, whereas the earnings advantage of an underemployed graduate is much smaller.

The real divide is therefore no longer simply between people with and without degrees. It is between graduates who enter the professional track and those who become trapped outside it.

University remains valuable, but its value has become more conditional, unequal and dependent on the first few years after graduation.

Rebuilding the Middle

Telling students to “work harder” cannot solve a structural queue. If every graduate completes another internship, earns another certificate and sends another hundred applications, the total number of good entry-level positions does not automatically increase.

Employers need to restore genuine entry-level work: positions designed for people who are capable but not yet fully trained. Job descriptions should distinguish between skills that are truly required on the first day and skills that can be learned within six months. Companies adopting AI should use it to improve junior productivity rather than simply eliminate junior headcount.

Universities should also report more than headline employment rates. A graduate working in a non-degree occupation should not be presented as equivalent to a graduate beginning a relevant professional career. Employment surveys should show job quality, salary distribution, contract stability, occupational matching and career progression.

Paid placements and apprenticeship-style pathways should become part of education rather than optional advantages available mainly to students with time and money. Governments can support this transition through incentives for graduate training, stronger vocational alternatives and policies that reduce the housing and relocation costs preventing young people from reaching areas with better opportunities.

Most importantly, society must stop treating every disappointing graduate outcome as evidence of individual failure.

A generation was told that education was the route to security. Many followed that advice precisely. The problem is not that they all became less intelligent, less ambitious or less hardworking at the same time. The structure receiving them changed.

The old promise was a broad professional middle - a rugby ball in which most graduates could find a stable place.

The new reality increasingly resembles a pyramid, with opportunity concentrated near the top.

At its worst, it becomes something uglier: a human centipede of cascading rejection, where each group survives by accepting what the group above no longer wants.

A healthy labour market should not require young people to climb by pushing someone else further down. The objective cannot be to place everyone at the top of the pyramid. It must be to rebuild the middle- and restore the first rung of the ladder.

References

Higher-education expansion and labour-market crowding: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-026-01210-x

Federal Reserve Bank of New York — The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — Underemployed College Graduates: https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/aug/jobs-degrees-underemployed-college-graduates-have

National Association of Colleges and Employers — Job Outlook: https://www.naceweb.org/research/reports/job-outlook/

Indeed Hiring Lab — Where College Degrees Still Matter: https://hiringlab.indeed.com/2026/01/28/where-do-college-degrees-still-matter-in-a-skills-first-job-market/

New York Fed Liberty Street Economics — Remote Work and Younger Workers: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/remote-work-leaves-younger-workers-sidelined/

OECD Employment Outlook: https://doi.org/10.1787/7e710f54-en

U.S. Census Bureau — Generative AI and Graduate Employment: https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2026/adrm/CES-WP-26-56.html

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