Sunday, October 30, 2011

What is the unemployment rate for people with college degrees?

4.2%. The median weekly income for college grads is $1,072 while it is $636 for high school grads. See Gloom Widespread as College Grads Face New Math By DAVID WESSEL of the WSJ. The news is not all great for college grads, though. Excerpts:
"On average, wages for workers with four-year college degrees fell by 8.6% adjusted for inflation between 2000 and 2010, according to government data."

"To be sure, data on wages and incomes don't give a complete picture. They don't count increasingly costly health benefits that many employers provide nor tax breaks enacted to cushion the recession's blow. Nor do they include aspects of life that don't show up in paychecks, from the iPhone to the growing odds of beating cancer.

And Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James X. Sullivan of Notre Dame, who argue official income data paint an overly gloomy picture, note that Americans managed to keep spending in the 2000s while incomes lagged. In an American Enterprise Institute working paper, they cite consumer surveys that suggest inflation-adjusted spending of the typical household (excluding out-of-pocket medical care, education costs and retirement savings) rose 16% in the 1990s and another 16% in the 2000s—some of that fueled by an unsustainable borrowing binge."

"The unemployment rate for recent college grads is 10.7%. More than 14% of Americans between 25 and 34 (5.9 million in all) are living with their parents, up significantly from before the recession. Nearly a quarter of them have bachelor's degrees."

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