A rise in unemployment among graduates will provide “another whip” for the Trump administration to attack the sector with, it has been warned.

According to , almost 2 million people with four-year college degrees were unemployed in September – a record 25 per cent of the total unemployed workforce.

Martha Gimbel, the executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University, said this is partly explained by unemployment rising more broadly – and the college-educated population slowly becoming larger and larger.

“Many people who might have shown up in the high school degree category are now showing up in the college educated category…the unemployment rate for college graduates is still substantially lower than it is for less educated workers.”

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But Richard Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard University, said the data suggests a structural shift. Artificial intelligence was likely to be a factor, with the AI boom harming firms that hire graduates, “possibly creating 2008 Great Recession conditions for white-collar workers”, he said.

Freeman also said that the trend may be partly due to the economic policies of the Trump administration.

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“Attacks on government employees, reduction of support for universities, and likely cuts in funding of hospitals have reduced demand for university graduates in sectors that traditionally hire them.”

With unemployment increasing only slightly, Daniel Hamermesh, professor emeritus at University of Texas at Austin and Royal Holloway, University of London, said the data suggested the start of a “fascinating” trend that would not be good news for US higher education.

His research has found the rise in unemployment among people with a college degree occurs mostly among women.

Hamermesh said the statistics were unlikely to be the “main weapon” in Trump’s arsenal against universities, but that they will be used by some people in the administration.

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“It’s pretty clear he’ll do whatever he can against higher ed. I think he has enough other things that drive him nuts that he doesn’t need to rely on this, but…if [higher education] is a whipping boy, this is one more to whip it with.”

Robert Kelchen, a professor and head of the department of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee, said it was hard to avoid reputational damage for factors that are “largely outside of universities’ control”.

“Universities need to be responsive to labour market trends that they see as being more permanent, which may result in refocusing on fields that are less vulnerable to technological disruptions or better preparing students to have a chance at going straight into supervisory positions if entry-level positions disappear.”

However, Gimbel stressed the need not to overreact, adding: “I don’t think people should be fundamentally changing their views on the value of a college education, at least for now.”

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patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com