There is a 52 percent underemployment figure in more than one report, and mixing them up will wreck a plan. This post uses the Burning Glass Institute’s “No Country for Young Grads,” by Gad Levanon and Guy Sigelman, in the July 2025 edition, as Johanna Alonso reported it in Inside Higher Ed on 4 August 2025. In that account, 52 percent of the class of 2023 were underemployed one year out. The layoff rate for degree holders aged 20 to 24 had nearly doubled. Sigelman’s line, quoted there, was to start your career in the middle. A different 52 percent, from Strada in 2024, describes another cut of graduates and lives in a different note on this site. Do not add the two 52s together. Do not swap their years. This page is the class of 2023, one year out, in the Burning Glass report as Inside Higher Ed relayed it.
Underemployment means the job does not typically require the degree. Starting “in the middle” means aiming at work that uses the degree’s skills even if the title is modest, instead of aiming at a famous title that uses none of them, or at a survival job you never leave. The report is not a sneer at survival jobs. People pay rent. The report is a warning that the first rung, if it is far from the work, is sticky. Alonso’s piece is also where the nearly doubled layoff rate for ages 20 to 24 appears. Young degree holders were not only mismatched. A larger share were being let go. A project that proves you can do the core task is part of how you ask for the rung that is closer to the work, where the layoff story and the mismatch story are both less likely to be your story. The report does not promise that. It gives you the stake.
What “closer to the work” means on a Tuesday
Read two postings you would be glad to have three years from now, and one posting you could do this year. Write the verbs that appear in both the later job and the earlier one. A data role and a research-assistant role may share cleaning, documenting, and explaining a result. A design role and a campus publicity role may share a brief, a constraint, and a shipped piece. The overlap is the middle. A project that practices the overlap is a project aimed at the report’s advice. A project that only proves you can follow a tutorial in a fashionable tool is aimed at the tutorial.
Build that overlap on purpose. If the later job writes to a client, write to a real reader: a professor, a club, a campus office. If the later job ships a small tool, ship one with a user who is not you, even if the user is a classmate. “Start in the middle” is not “invent a fake senior title.” It is “do a slice of the real task now, at the scale you can finish.”
The class of 2023’s 52 percent is a reason to be picky about the slice. A summer spent only on work you cannot describe in the vocabulary of the later job adds a year on the wrong side of that percentage. A summer spent on work you can describe, even at low pay you can afford, is the middle. If the only paid work is far from the field, keep it, and put the overlap project beside it for a few hours a week. Rent and the report can both be honored. Pretending the report forbids a paycheck is a misreading.
How to talk about the figure
Say “Burning Glass, class of 2023, 52 percent underemployed one year out, as reported in August 2025.” Say the layoff rate nearly doubled for degree holders aged 20 to 24, and name the same article. If someone quotes 52 percent without a year, ask which report. The Strada figure and this one are both real and both easy to confuse. A plan built on the wrong one will still be a plan. It will be aimed at a different cohort than you think.
Sigelman’s “start in the middle” is advice attached to those findings. It is not itself a separate statistic. Treat it as the authors’ recommendation. You can follow it without pretending it is a regression coefficient. The recommendation is concrete enough to change a project brief this week.
Use the age band when you repeat the layoff line. Twenty to twenty-four is not every graduate, and it is not mid-career workers. A doubled rate inside a young band is a reason for people in that band to take the first job’s content seriously. It is not a headline you paste onto a different age group.
A project brief that fits the advice
One page. The reader. The task, copied from a real posting’s verb. The constraint, including the hours you actually have. The output. The date it will be done. Show it to one person who does similar work, if you know one, and ask whether the output resembles the job. Revise once. Then put it on the resume as a single line with the result. Stop. A second project can start next month if the first one taught you the overlap was wrong. Endless revision is how “start in the middle” becomes “never start.”
If a class already assigns this shape of work, use the class. Rename nothing. Describe the audience and the result in the line. The Burning Glass findings do not care whether the artifact was assigned. They care whether your first jobs sit near the skilled work or far from it. An assigned project with a real reader is nearer than a vague personal brand.
How Flightpath helps
Pin a role that represents the work you want, and a role you can do this year. The gap list between them is the overlap, against facts you confirmed. Build the project that closes one gap. Confirm the line when it is true. A GitHub connection, if you use one, stays partial until you confirm the repository. A class-project import of its own is coming soon. The portal plan by year should place that project in this term. A someday pile will not finish it.
The tracker keeps the applications to the nearer roles, so the famous titles do not eat the week. You approve any note before it is sent. Eligibility labels stay on the posting. A role you cannot take is not ranked above one you can take. The class of 2023 figure stays in the Burning Glass report and the August 2025 article, with the class year attached. The brief for the project stays short enough to finish.