American businesses are hiring at their lowest rates since April 2020, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The market is competitive enough that even graduates from top business schools are having trouble finding work.
A Monday Bloomberg report analyzed job placement outcomes at the top seven MBA programs in the country (Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, the MIT Sloan School of Management, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business) and found that job placement outcomes for all seven schools decreased in 2024 compared to 2021.
At Harvard Business School, for example, the percentage of MBA students without a job offer three months after graduation nearly quadrupled from 4% of the graduating class in 2021 to 15% in 2024. The MIT Sloan School of Management reported nearly identical numbers, growing from 4.1% in 2021 to 15% in 2024.
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Kristen Fitzpatrick, head of career development and alumni relationships at Harvard Business School, told The Wall Street Journal last month that MBAs were “not immune to the difficulties of the job market.”
“Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator,” Fitzpatrick said. “You have to have the skills.”
The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, meanwhile, saw its percentage of grads without a job offer increase nearly sixfold, from 2.3% in 2021 to 13.2% in 2024, while Columbia’s percentage nearly doubled from 6% in 2021 to 11% in 2024.
Stanford’s percentage tripled from 4% in 2021 to 12% in 2024, while Northwestern’s grew more than threefold from 2.9% to 10.2%.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business had the best job placement rates overall, with only 1% of its students unable to find a job three months after graduating in 2021. However, even Wharton saw that percentage increase to 6.9% in 2024.
Harvard Business School. Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A full-time residential MBA at a top-seven school like Wharton or Harvard can cost over a quarter of a million dollars, per MBA site Poets and Quants. Still, the degree usually touts a strong return on investment: A survey from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) found that the median starting salary for MBA graduates at U.S. companies was $120,000 in 2024.
So why are job placement rates going down? Poets and Quants noted that over 70% of the class of 2022 at Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia Business Schools ended up in the finance, consulting, or tech industries. According to the WSJ, key players in these industries have cut back on MBA hiring.
For example, consulting firm McKinsey decreased the number of MBAs it hires from the University of Chicago’s Booth school from 71 students in 2023 to 33 in 2024, per The Journal. According to the same report, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have also reduced their MBA hiring targets.
Across the tech sector, economists also told Business Insider that companies were hiring fewer MBA graduates as they invested more in artificial intelligence. Recent layoffs at Meta, Microsoft, and Google earlier this year show that big tech companies are making cost cuts while also committing billions of dollars to AI investments.
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