College graduates are the new unskilled worker

[dkf]

The youth unemployment rate for newly minted college graduates in the 20- to 24-year-old age bracket is at an all-time high of 60.6 percent, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Labor.

This raises the question of whether students can find meaningful employment after graduation with the degrees they currently have.

According to a study done by the Department of Education, the average debt-load per student is $21,600 at schools where students study art, music and design. The loan payment for this amount of debt would average out to $250 a month. Even after five years of work experience, graduates that make $40,000 a year would still feel an earnings crunch.

But do math and engineering majors fare any better? They do somewhat.

Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce conducted an analysis on government education data that found that people are much more likely to get a job out of college if they choose a major with a clear career path, such as business. They also stand to make a lot more money if they choose a math or science major over liberal arts.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/285471-college-graduates-are-the-new-unskilled-worker#ixzz2MI3KaRRC
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[MAD Dave]

1. Nothing new here!

I began to run into this problem in 1999 when I graduated with my B.Sc. It has ever really been better. Ive been underemployed for 10 of the last 14 years.

[Fumesucker]

2. There aren't enough high paying jobs to go around

The prime reason for this is hoarding behavior on the part of the mega wealthy.

Beyond a certain point the desire to hoard money is a mental illness just like any other hoarding behavior can become.

If every single one of those who got the "wrong" degrees got the "right" degrees then the competition for those sort of jobs would become much more intense which would drive the wages down, gravity couldn't be more inevitable.

[HughBeaumont]

3. Corporate behavior isn't really helping matters much on that front . . .

. . . when someone is lucky enough TO retire, they tend not to replace them, but just divvy up the duties among existing workers.

During the Shrub Maladministration, older workers who didn't get fired or get their pensions looted got their 401k's gutted, keeping them put for an extended amount of time. Can't move in if they don't get to move on or out.

Corporations don't hire for a prevealing, living wage because they don't have to. In an employERs market, they pretty much can do whatever they damned well please, because your student loan debt and for-profit health insurance (if they choose to give it to you) means you NEED this job.

I don't know what long-term world bosses live in that dictates you can pay workers the same real-dollar wage forever and ever without any sort of production/cost-of-living/inflation adjustments and think they'll still be able to afford your product or services. It's a shamelessly stupid system that's going to eventually consume itself.

[DaveJ]

4. It seems most commerce is B2B

People buy whatever they need to live, but most companies sell to other companies, and that dictates what they can afford to pay their employees. Of course humans make up the bottom layer of purchasing, but overall, humans are just cogs, unfortunately, in the machine, and not usually the most important cogs. Something needs to be done to put people at the forefront by acknowledging the fact that we all want to better our lives, feel happiness, comfort, and not have to worry every moment about what could go wrong. My point is (in business jargon) there's a lot of potential for improvement.

When I say people should have basic needs taken care of, Republicans always say I must be socialist, but I think that people need basic needs, goes without saying, otherwise people would just be living on the streets. Republicans are sadistic in that they think people living in fear is somehow necessary.

[Fumesucker]

6. It all stems from the same mentality, $250K/yr is poor, $25K/yr is living the high life

Just like someone posted on GD a day or so ago, the very same people say exactly both of those arguments, sometimes even within the same paragraph.

[gtar100]

5. Don't expect any republicans to give a shit.

This ought to be a wake up call but the last thing the republicans in congress seems to care about these days is jobs. And since they are calling the shots *again* in Washington, this issue will not get the attention it deserves.

[mountain grammy]

7. This makes me feel a little better. My daughter is 24 and got her degree

in Enviromental Science last fall. She is currently employed about 60 hours a month for the university calling for pledges. She will lose that job this spring because she is no longer a student.
I begged her to major in math or, at least, Environment Engineering, because she's a math wiz, but she loved geology and the science classes. I said "great, you can be a geologist and grow up to be governor."
Well, she'd be better than our current geologist gov. who insists fracking is safe and even drank some fracking water (yeah, right!)
Luckily, thanks to an inheritance from her aunt, the reasonable tuition at Metro State University, and a small condo we've owned in Denver since before she was born, the kid has no college debt. But the job searches have come up empty. A few friends have gone to the fracking fields of North Dakota, but my kid is still looking.