Unemployment has long been regarded as a key economic indicator, and the latest numbers are noteworthy \u2014 particularly for young adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds climbed to 10.5% in August, the highest point in nearly four years<\/a>. The 0.5% increase from July comes amid economic instability and advances in AI technology that threaten to upend the labor market.\u00a0<\/p>\n The overall unemployment rate also rose slightly in August to 4.3%, a number not hit since October 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marquita Walker, interim chair of labor studies at the IU School of Social Work, attributed much of the increase to instability caused by the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that there\u2019s an industry you can go to right now \u2014 manufacturing, finance, environmental, health care \u2014 that hasn\u2019t been impacted in some form or fashion by some of these administrative executive orders,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has issued many executive orders impacting the economy, immigration and more. Notably, he began imposing tariffs in February<\/a>, citing his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate economic activity \u201cto deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat\u201d to the country\u2019s economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the Trump administration, the average U.S. tariff has grown from less than 2.5% at the beginning of his term, to more than 18%, according to the BBC<\/a>. Trump\u2019s authority to impose these tariffs has been challenged in court, and the legal battles are ongoing, with the Supreme Court agreeing to review the legality of most of the tariffs in November<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Implementation of tariffs has been inconsistent.<\/a> Changing deadlines and abrupt pauses on reciprocal tariffs has fueled confusion for business owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n The uncertainty surrounding tariffs and Trump\u2019s executive orders, Walker said, makes business owners reluctant to invest in new workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFacilities aren\u2019t able to project in three months, six months, a year, what their needs are going to be, and so they\u2019re not going to hire people if they believe or assume that within a short time frame they\u2019re not going to need those workers,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Walker predicted that in the coming months, unemployment will continue to increase. That means new college graduates may not be able to find jobs in their field and may see themselves accepting lower-paid jobs than expected, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Compared to historic unemployment numbers, today\u2019s unemployment rate is not alarmingly high, said Uric Dufrene, the Sanders Chair in Business at IU Southeast. But there are other signs of a tightening job market. The US only added 22,000 jobs in August and lost jobs in June<\/a>.\u00a0 In comparison, the three-month average for jobs added in the first quarter before Trump implemented tariffs was 111,000 per month, according to News Nation.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe last time we saw numbers like that, we have to go back to the Great Recession, 2007-2009,\u201d Dufrene said.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s typical for the unemployment numbers for young people to be higher than the overall unemployment rate, Dufrene said. But as the economy slows down, the gap will widen. Employers will be reluctant to hire and when they do, they\u2019ll hire those with greater experience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYoung people tend to be employed in sectors that are more cyclical: leisure, hospitality, retail,\u201d Dufrene said. \u201cSo these are sectors that when the economy is slowing down, it\u2019s where consumers tend to pull back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n