Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report:
Today’s college graduates are entering one of the tightest job markets in years, as companies scale back entry-level hiring amid economic uncertainty and the explosion of artificial intelligence. Just under a third of 2025 graduates — and fewer than half of 2024 graduates — have found full-time employment related to their education, according to one recent report.
The market is even tougher for young adults with autism, who have long had one of the highest rates of joblessness among individuals with disabilities. Even before the hiring slowdown, more than 30 percent of autistic college graduates were unemployed, and about a quarter of those who did have jobs were in office- and administration-support roles, one study found.
One key reason: Autistic students often have trouble navigating traditional hiring processes, including interviews, which favor neurotypical candidates.
To help autistic students like Myers land jobs, some colleges are offering career-readiness classes and one-on-one career coaching; some are also working with employers to make their hiring and employment practices more inclusive. Drexel, which began providing career prep to students in its autism support program in 2017, has one of the oldest programs.
Some major corporations have also stepped up, forming partnerships with colleges to recruit neurodivergent students for internships and jobs.
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It’s difficult to say how many students with autism are enrolled in college, in part because many students choose not to disclose their diagnosis to campus disability services — a prerequisite to receiving accommodations. The best estimate is that there are somewhere between 135,400 and 286,254 autistic college students, according to research by Bradley E. Cox, founder of the College Autism Network and an associate professor of higher, adult and lifelong education at Michigan State University.
