AMNA NAWAZ: Well, we are in commencement season, when graduates look back on their accomplishments and look ahead to their future ambitions.

But shifts in the economy and the anxiety around it are changing how this generation of grads see their prospects.

Ali Rogin has more on that as part of our series Rethinking College.

ALI ROGIN: Recent college graduates are facing one of the more difficult job markets in many years.

The unemployment rate for recent graduates between the ages of 22 to 27 is over 5.5 percent, and some believe it's higher than that.

It's above the national unemployment rate.

And all of the talk and forecasting about A.I.

wiping out millions of jobs is souring young adults on what they could face.

Take a listen to this montage of recent commencement speeches, where a speaker talked about A.I.

and how they were received by students.

ERIC SCHMIDT, Former CEO, Google: Last December, "TIME" magazine selected its person of the year for 2025 and it was -- this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence.

Interesting.

(BOOING) GLORIA CAULFIELD, Tavistock Development Company: The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution.

(BOOING) GLORIA CAULFIELD: Whoa.

(BOOING) SCOTT BORCHETTA, CEO, Big Machine Records: A.I.

is rewriting production as we sit here.

(BOOING) SCOTT BORCHETTA: I know it.

Deal with it.

Like I said, it's a tool.

(BOOING) ALI ROGIN: We're going to talk tonight about some ways of navigating this moment.

It's the focus of a new book by New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor.

It's called "How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work."

Jodi, welcome back to the "News Hour."

JODI KANTOR, Author, "How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work": Thank you so much.

ALI ROGIN: We are well into commencement season, and this book really came out of an address you gave last year where you talked to students.

You interviewed many of them before giving your speech about some of the fears that they were facing.

And since that time, it seems like the conditions have only gotten worse.

What are you hearing from students now about their worries about getting into the job market and really start -- beginning to chart the rest of their lives?

JODI KANTOR: Well, one of the reasons they're so worried and one of the reasons why I think many of them have a negative impression of A.I.

is that they are being sent a terrible cultural message.

Graduation is supposed to be a moment of possibility, and they're being told the A.I.

moment is going to make you superfluous, entry-level workers are not going to be needed.

I think, first of all, we don't know that that's true, and it's also a very damaging message.

The other thing that is very important to say is, memo for anyone who hasn't applied for a job in a while.

The job hiring process is very A.I.-fueled right now, and it has turned digital and lonely.

Looking for a job has always been stressful, but these young people are going from gigantic digital job portal to gigantic digital job portal.

They're seeing these listings that may or may not be ghost listings, meaning, do they even represent real jobs?

Some of them are being interviewed by A.I., instead of being interviewed by real people.

So they are entering into the work force and, like - - or trying to -- and essentially meeting nobody.

And they say that this is just a degrading and dehumanizing experience.

So the boos did not surprise me at all.

But, that said, I think there's a more interesting question here.

And this is the question I tried to address in the book.

What are they supposed to actually do?

They need jobs.

They need to move forward with their lives.

So what does it look like for a young person to have a positive, productive response to this very intimidating and degrading environment?

ALI ROGIN: And you offer a lot of advice about how to respond to this degrading environment.

I do want to ask you, though, first, you talk in the book about how every generation has its advice... JODI KANTOR: Yes.

ALI ROGIN: ... that eventually becomes obsolete, whether it's study Japanese or, one word, plastics.

So, in some ways, it does seem like this generation is no different, but then, in others, it seems like the conditions are much harder.

So where do you think this generation lies in terms of how hard things are over the spectrum of when people graduated?

JODI KANTOR: I think we can say what we do know and what we don't know.

What we do know is that there is a long history of people being told exactly what was going to happen in the workplace that turned out to be wrong or misleading.

And also there's, like, a long history of conventional wisdom about the thing you supposedly have to study.

When I was in high school, it was learn Japanese.

We were literally told that the Japanese were going to take over the world economy and that we were going to be losers if we were not fluent in Japanese.

Well, meanwhile, the Japanese stock market after that languished for 30 years.

And then the conventional wisdom was, you need to learn genetics, and then it was Mandarin, and then it was coding.

So these are all great pursuits.

If this is your passion, of course you should study it.

But is it an infallible golden ticket that is going to earn you instant stability?

Of course not.

So I would say the first thing we can say is, like, beware of conventional wisdom or anybody who professes too much certainty about exactly what's going to happen.

I think the second thing we can say is that it's too early in the game to know exactly what's going to happen with the future of work.

It's a really tough hiring point right now, as you alluded to.

A.I.

is not the only reason.

It may not even be the major reason.

I think we are several years out from seeing exactly what the workplace will look like, whether A.I.

is really going to be a revolution or more of a red herring.

And, for that reason, I want us to work with really time-tested materials that will be durable for this generation, no matter what happens.

ALI ROGIN: And a couple of the materials are -- the concepts that you lay out include finding your craft and marrying it with a need that's out there.

Can you flesh that out for us a little bit?

JODI KANTOR: The best careers, the people who are both happiest and most successful, I think, harness two things, a craft and a need.

And I think you want to look for each of those and pair them.

A craft is a special skill you have that other people don't have.

Surgery is certainly a craft, but so is putting together an amazing news broadcast like this one.

Baking can be a craft.

Writing recipes can be a craft.

Teaching can be a craft.

A craft is something you get good at over a long period of time.

It's not instantaneous.

But when you have it, it provides at least some protection from being treated as disposable or interchangeable in the marketplace.

Any employee can be fired, but your craft can never be taken away from you.

And then I think, if craft is authority, I think it gets really powerful when it's paired with a need.

I want to say to young people, using your own eyes and ears, what is your independent assessment of what other human beings are going to need during your time at work?

What products?

What services?

What information?

When you have a need that you're chasing, your career is less like a lonely paddle up a stream, and it's more like you're being buoyed by a rushing river, whether it's an altruistic need or a business need that is pushing you.

I think the need factor is also very important right now because what we talked about a second ago, young people are being told essentially that they're not needed.

That's not true.

I want them to have a rejoinder and a way of seeing, of course my energies and ambitions are valuable.

I'm going to give my dreams a fighting chance here.

ALI ROGIN: Such great advice to end on.

The book is "How to Start."

Jodi Kantor, thank you so much for talking with us about it.

JODI KANTOR: Thank you for having me.