Part of the reason the undereducated lost so many jobs is that with their limited skills they were employed in substantial portion in the construction and housing markets — another obvious conclusion. Those jobs have not bounced back because home values continue to fall, mortgage barriers are high and foreclosures continue at a rapid pace. These jobs are not just down. They will not return soon, if they ever do, to the same level as during the housing boom.
The final major conclusion of the report is that the job erosion among the undereducated began before the recession. This makes sense. As people left college over the past several decades and employers had a choice between the educated and those who were not, they took the educated people.
What the report is much less aggressive in explaining is that just because college graduates can get jobs does not mean that they can get good ones. Getting a job does not mean getting a high wage. The fear that the current generation of young people will not do as well as their parents who are aged in their fifties and sixties persists, probably because it is almost certainly true. Productivity gains in most industries continue to allow companies to hire more temporary workers. And workers who have permanent positions tend to get benefits worse then they received just a few years ago. They also labor harder for less money. It is an employer’s market.
America’s current generation of people in their twenties with good educations are not a lost generation economically. They are just a financially crippled one. For people with relatively poor educations, the lost generation label may apply. But, no one should be shocked by that. People go to college to get good jobs. And those educated people are getting jobs. They are just not as good as the graduates expected.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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