Fed’s Williams: AI Is Not Causing the Drop in New-Graduate Hiring

Williams is pushing back on the AI-displacement narrative at a moment when it has become the default explanation for weak entry-level hiring, so his framing matters less as a labor-market call than as a signal about how the Fed wants the productivity story read. The distinction he draws — AI adoption showing up as productivity, not as the cause of the graduate slowdown — leaves the actual driver of that slowdown unnamed, which is the gap worth watching. Whether the Fed's own data work fills that gap, or whether the explanation settles elsewhere, is the open question.