Why elite MBA graduates are struggling to find jobs

In business there is no surer sign of distress than when a firm delays its financial results. That also appears to be true of business schools. Around Christmas—and in many cases behind their usual schedules—America’s leading business schools published their equivalent of annual reports, which include data on the new jobs of graduates from their Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes, typically two-year courses for students with professional experience. We have crunched the numbers. At the top 15 business schools, the share of students in 2024 who sought and accepted a job offer within three months of graduating, a standard measure of career outcomes, fell by six percentage points, to 84%. Compared with the average over the past five years, that share declined by eight points.