Employers say grads are ready. Employers say they can't find anyone. Both are true.

What the two surveys found

In NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, more than 70% of responding employers said new college graduates are somewhat well prepared for the jobs they're entering, and slightly more than 20% said very well prepared. More than 40% said new graduates' skills are very closely aligned with their hiring needs, and 56% said partially aligned. Employers gave graduates high marks for teamwork and lower marks for communication, professionalism and critical thinking. The survey ran February 12 to March 17, 2026. It drew 185 responses, 142 of them from NACE employer members, a 19.9% response rate among eligible members.

In a survey of U.S. hiring decision-makers conducted for Express Employment Professionals in late 2025, two-thirds said they planned to increase headcount in the first half of 2026, the highest figure since that survey began in 2020. More than a third said they had open roles they couldn't fill. Asked why, 50% said applicants lacked relevant experience, and 26% said they struggled to evaluate informal or self-taught skills. The compensation explanations were fading. Only 21% cited unwillingness to work required hours, 19% cited pay, and 14% cited benefits.

Side by side, they read as a contradiction. Graduates are ready, and employers can't find anyone ready. It stops looking like one as soon as you check who was asked, and about whom.

Why they don't conflict

They surveyed different employers. NACE's respondents are NACE employer members, meaning organizations with structured university recruiting programs. They hire new graduates on purpose, every year, through a process built for it. The Express survey polled hiring decision-makers in general, across every role and level. Most of them weren't thinking about new graduates when they answered. They were thinking about the senior analyst role that has been open since March. An employer who says applicants lack relevant experience for a mid-level posting is saying nothing about graduates.

They asked about different people. NACE asked employers to evaluate the graduates they hired. That's a judgment made after selection. These candidates got through the screen, and the employer is reporting how they turned out. The Express survey asked about applicants, meaning the whole pool before selection, including everyone that current application volumes deliver to an inbox. The average applicant should look worse than the average hire. That's what a screen is for.

They meant different things by ready. NACE's preparedness question is about career readiness in the competency sense. Can this person work in a team, communicate clearly, exercise judgment, behave professionally. "Relevant experience" in the Express framing is narrower. Have you done this job, or one close to it, before. A new graduate can be highly career-ready and have no relevant experience at all. That is roughly what a new graduate is.

The gap that does exist

It's a gap between readiness and legibility.

Employers who hire graduates through structured programs, with time to interview and evaluate, say graduates are ready. Employers screening a general pool with instruments built for experienced candidates say they can't find what they need. The second group is describing its own process, which can't see preparedness in a candidate who hasn't held the job before. The 26% who admit they can't evaluate informal or self-taught skills are saying so outright. The instrument is the limitation.

NACE's findings point the same way. Employers said the most effective thing a student can do to demonstrate skills is show up to the interview with examples, meaning situations where they used a skill to solve a problem, and connect coursework and extracurriculars to the language employers already use for skills. That's a translation problem. The readiness exists and has to be rendered in a form the screen can read.

There is a real weakness in the NACE data as well. Employers are less impressed with graduates' communication, professionalism and critical thinking than with their teamwork. Those competencies show up in an interview rather than on a resume, so the legibility problem and the development problem overlap. Still, "room to improve on communication" is a different diagnosis from "half of applicants aren't qualified," and it calls for a different response.

What this means for career services

The scary number isn't a curriculum verdict. When a survey says half of applicants lack relevant experience, it's describing a general applicant pool screened by experience-based instruments. That has nothing to do with your graduates or your programming. The employers who hire graduates say the opposite.

Legibility is the job. What moves outcomes is making readiness visible to employers whose screens weren't built for it. Structured examples students can use in interviews. Competency-based evaluations from internship supervisors. Project artifacts that show judgment rather than claim it. Coursework translated into an employer's vocabulary. None of this is glamorous, and it's where the leverage is.

Go after the 26%. Employers who say they can't evaluate self-taught or informal skills are telling you they'd hire more broadly if they could see better. A career center that can hand a hiring manager a structured reference, a competency assessment, or a portfolio with context is solving that employer's stated problem.

And have the answer ready for the budget meeting, because "fifty percent of employers say applicants lack relevant experience" will get quoted at you. The response is short. That survey polled general hiring managers about all applicants for all roles. The employers who hire our graduates say they're prepared. The gap is in how readiness gets communicated, and here is what we're doing about it.

What would change this reading

If NACE's employer members, the ones with structured programs and a clear view of the graduates they hire, started reporting falling preparedness, that would be a signal about graduates rather than about screening. If a general-employer survey asked specifically about new-graduate hires and still found half lacking relevant experience, the legibility explanation would be in trouble. Neither has happened.

Two cautions on the data. NACE's Spring Update is a member survey with a response rate under 20%, and the members who respond are plausibly the ones most engaged with campus recruiting. The Express survey was commissioned by a staffing firm whose business benefits from a skills-gap story. Both are useful. Neither settles anything on its own.