The Dispatch
Job Market
Jitters
What happens when an MBA - the world's most famous degree - can’t get you a job?
By Nick Harland
“There will be periods when recruitment goes up and there'll be periods when recruitment goes down, and it's correlated with the economic cycle.”
"The most painful rejections were the first ones. And when you face rejection number 50, but your classmate is having a huge party because he got a job offer at the Bank of America, you feel very weird."
“Don’t even try,” were the words of advice to Fernando Gajate from a second-year MBA student. “Stick to what you know.”
These are probably not the words an MBA student preparing to find a summer internship would expect to hear - particularly a student at a top American business school, as Gajate is. But it’s an increasingly common attitude in the world of MBAs, where recent employment reports have made for grim reading.
At the business schools of Harvard and MIT, 23 percent of job-seeking graduates from the class of 2024 were still unemployed three months after graduating. The figure was 20 percent at Stanford and only a smidgeon lower at the likes of Fuqua, Ross, and Booth - all top 20 business schools - not just in the US, but worldwide.
Naturally, such eyebrow-raising statistics make for eyebrow-raising headlines. Because from an outsider’s perspective, it seems incredible that a degree that can cost upwards of US$200,000 can also fail to land a job. But according to Caroline Diarte Edwards, co-founder of the admissions consulting firm Fortuna Admissions, an MBA isn’t immune to the turbulent global economy.
" I think what a lot of the headlines miss is that recruitment for business school graduates is always cyclical,” she explains. “There will be periods when recruitment goes up and there'll be periods when recruitment goes down, and it's correlated with the economic cycle. Every time there's a downturn there are headlines jumping on it, proclaiming the doom of the MBA degree and suggesting that it's some sort of permanent downturn - but it has never been a permanent downturn."
Even if this is a temporary blip, business schools don’t seem overly keen to talk about it. QS Insights Magazine reached out to the media teams of more than a dozen business schools but none responded. And whilst there’s plenty of truth to what Edwards is saying, it’s also true that this is a historic low for the MBA job market. For instance, in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, MBA unemployment rates in the US peaked at 13 percent: not insignificant, but not quite 23 percent.
There may be other factors at play. MBA employment reports tend not to stay online forever, but Wharton Business School is one of the few business schools to keep its archive active. It makes for interesting reading. Whilst unemployment rates at Wharton have been this low before, in both 2003 and 2009, what’s different is the percentage of MBAs actively seeking employment. That figure was 88 percent and 86 percent in those two years, but dipped to just 69 percent in 2024. It suggests that more graduates nowadays are being sponsored by employers, starting their own business, or - as Edwards suggests - simply holding out for a better job opportunity.
"It's not that MBA grads are not getting great job opportunities, it's that they're holding out for their dream job,” she explains. “They know that they have lots of options and they are not necessarily in a hurry to take the first job offer that they get."
Edwards goes on to cite the fact that major tech and consulting firms over-hired in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a subsequent slowdown in MBA recruitment. There’s also one factor that is very specific to 2025: an increasing hostility towards international students in the US. Vice President JD Vance has spoken openly about deporting foreign students if their stay isn’t in the “best interest” of the US - and student visas at leading American universities have subsequently been randomly revoked in recent weeks.
Although there has perhaps always been a difference in the job prospects of domestic and international students in American MBA programmes, one international student told QS Insights Magazine that it has become more pronounced under the current administration. They also alleged that an interview offer from Meta was rescinded after the firm realised they were an international student. This time last year, a different international student was offered (and accepted) the very same internship.
Szymon Mackala is a Polish MBA student at Goizueta Business School, and says that international students face extra obstacles in such a challenging environment. He pinpoints the challenge of “understanding the rules” of the American job market, where relationships are transactional and connections are everything. "My position in this race was totally different from some other colleagues who had other resources, like having local family or friends,” he says. “Someone who has been living in Atlanta for 10 years has a totally different network than someone who came here in July."
By his reckoning, Mackala applied for about 120 summer internships. "Before I went through this process, if I spoke with someone and they were throwing around such high numbers, I would have been like: it's impossible. You have to be doing something wrong. It doesn't work like this."
Mackala says the long line of rejections were difficult to take at first. "The most painful rejections were the first ones. And when you face rejection number 50, but your classmate is having a huge party because he got a job offer at the Bank of America, you feel very weird." He eventually received four internship offers, accepting one of them last month. If nothing else, the process has made him more resilient in light of an unexpectedly bruising job search. "I had to protect my mindset. This was not easy. It is way easier to tell my story right now after signing the contract. But when you are in your darkest hour, it's terrible."
It’s a chastening situation for students, many of whom have given up almost everything to study an MBA in the US. Not only have they paid astronomical tuition fees (which are only getting bigger), but they have left well-paid jobs behind to pursue their dream. Gajate, who applied for around 150 summer internships and got three offers, says students like himself can’t afford to be picky in times like these.
"I think it's just a matter of being really strategic about what you want, trying to leverage your past experience and connections,” he says. “You also need to be very realistic about what you want to get, because many people start an MBA hoping to pivot career or industry. I think that's still possible - but it's much more difficult than it was before."
The key for Mackala was to focus on the things he could control. “Lots of my friends were talking about how the economy is very bad. And it’s true. When you check the data, it was way easier to find a job 2, 3, or 4 years ago. So, it's tough, but we don't have control over it. We only have control over how we’re going to sell our story. This is the only thing that I should master. Complaining about the economy is not going to change the economy."
As for business schools, they may have been here before, but it doesn’t make the situation any less challenging. Edwards says they “know the levers they must pull” to try and boost the employment prospects of their graduates, reaching out more to their pool of recruiters and offering students more support throughout the tough recruitment process.
And whilst Edwards maintains that the current situation isn’t coming up in conversations with prospective applicants just yet, it’s something to keep an eye on. An MBA has long been held up as one of the most sought-after degrees in the world, so having 20 percent of your graduates unemployed after three months doesn’t feel like a situation that can go on for much longer.
Still, for now at least, any reports of the MBA’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. But if things don’t improve soon, this world-famous degree is going to have to do some serious shape-shifting. History tells us it will probably manage that - but in these turbulent times, it seems foolish to try and predict anything.