College students about to graduate are entering a challenging labor market. As a result, many will be trading in their caps for a crash course in health care, student loans and cash flow.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said at the firm’s summit in March that this year’s graduates could experience the highest jobless rate in years, due in part to artificial intelligence making more entry-level roles obsolete.
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates swelled to roughly 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The overall unemployment rate during that time was closer to 4.2%…
Staying on parents’ health plan is ‘least costly’ option
Many college graduates have some time before they need to figure out their own health insurance coverage. Young adults can typically stay on a parent’s private plan until age 26, said Joel Cantor, a professor at Rutgers University and the founding director of the Center for State Health Policy. Some states even allow dependents to stay on longer than that.
“This will commonly be the least costly option,” Cantor said.
But not all recent graduates will have this option. Medicare, for example, doesn’t allow coverage of dependents, and so if your parents are insured under the program, you’ll need to find your own insurance, Cantor said.
“Students who have low incomes may be eligible for Medicaid,” Cantor said, “which is comprehensive coverage and typically has no premium.”
Students without other options can also look for coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. “Depending on their income, they may be eligible [for] subsidies,” Cantor said.