The invention relates to the field of catalyst preparation, and discloses a magnetic core-shell hydrogenation catalyst and a method for preparing 2, 2, 4, 4-tetramethyl-1,3-cyclobutanediol, the catalyst is represented as Fe3O4 (at) S/M; wherein Fe3O4 is a core layer, S is a shell layer carrier, and M is a main active metal and/or an auxiliary metal loaded on the shell layer carrier; the active metal is one or more of Ru, Ni, Ir, Pd and Pt, and the loading capacity is 1-50 wt% of the catalyst; wherein the auxiliary metal is one or more of Cu, Fe, Co, Zn and Sn, and the molar ratio of the auxiliary metal to the main active metal is 0.1-10: 1. The catalyst has the following advantages: 1, the hydrogenation speed is high; (2) the catalyst has high conversion rate on raw materials and high selectivity on target products; (3) strong magnetism is achieved, rapid magnetic separation can be achieved, and filtering separation is not needed;.