Even MBAs from top business schools are struggling to get hired

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Just how difficult is it to get a foothold in today’s professional job market? It’s taking many of America’s most credentialed business-school graduates months to land and accept offers. With companies scrutinizing every white-collar hire, the job market for M.B.A.s has sputtered for more than a year.

That’s weakening a reliable catapult into executive-track jobs that can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. Though there were hiring rebounds at some of the most elite programs—including Harvard and Columbia universities—hiring from many top-tier business schools remains below prepandemic levels. At Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, for instance, 21% of job seekers were still looking for work three months after graduation last summer.

About 15% of those at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business remained on the hunt. Those rates are similar to 2024 but sharply lower than 2019, when many employers couldn’t hire enough white-collar professionals. Just 5% of job-seeking M.B.A.s graduating from Duke then were still looking for work three months postgraduation.

At Michigan that year, it was 4%. John Bush, 33, earned his M.B.A. in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He initially sought finance jobs in New York but widened his net to banks in Charlotte, N.C. He is now also considering luxury retail after spending time in Paris. One role he applied for in retail had an annual salary of $80,000, less than what he earned before going to business school.

“It might be worth it," Bush said. The U.S. added an average of about 49,000 jobs a month in 2025, the lowest pace of growth in more than two decades outside the two most recent recessions.