Economically, falling real wages for young college graduates is resulting from the economic shifting of traditional labor to technological advancement and cheaper labor abroad in developing nations. More young college graduates in Western nations are finding themselves underemployed, taking lower-skill jobs for less pay at the expense of their less educated peers. The continuation of this trend, five years after the Great Recession, suggests this problem is more than just temporary. Here in the United States analysis of new data reveals the real wages of young college graduates surprisingly fell in 2013, by 1.3 percent. The decline reverses a slight uptick in 2012, and continues along a 10-year trend in which real average earnings for young college graduates have fallen by a sizeable 12 percent since 2003. The trend is rooted in demand-side and supply-side factors. On the demand side, the high underemployment plaguing young college graduates is connected back to the slow-growth economy. Our education, tax and regulatory policies have failed to adapt to the realities of a data-driven world, keeping investment and high-wage job creation on the sidelines. Here simply having a college degree is no longer enough to guarantee success. In fact, a recent study from the Federal Reserve found that one-quarter of college graduates earned the same amount as those with a high school diploma or GED. And on the supply side, colleges are failing to adequately prepare college graduates for the high-skill, high-wage jobs that are being created in fields like data analytics and tech. This troubling trend presents significant political and economic challenges that policymakers can no longer afford to ignore. As consumers and taxpayers in their prime earning years, young college graduates represent one of the most important segments of the working population. crainsnewyork/article/20130627/ECONOMY/130629889/fed-nearly-half-of-recent-college-grads-struggling
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 06:17:14 +0000
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