<p>This is an interesting report about finding a job after college, by the Federal Reserve: </p>
<p>Interesting- with easy to see graphics, no need to read text to get the trends.</p>
<p>I thought the underemployment graph on page 6 is interesting. Unemployment rates are fairly stable across majors, but the levels or underemployment are very different. </p>
<p>But part of that comes from the definition of “underemployment” in the first place. Engineering and teaching are two fields that almost always require a specific major and/or credentialing for employment – so no one without those degrees/credentials without those degrees will qualify, and it is easy to draw the line as to what is degree-specific and what is not. That is, the credentialed teacher either has a teaching job or she does not; she could be earning 6 figures selling real estate, but as it is unrelated to her major and doesn’t require an education degree, that would fall within the red band of the chart. (Real estate brokers need a license, but typically that is gained by passing an exam that does not require an underlying degree).</p>
<p>Now we see very wide red bands when it comes to degrees like business, liberal arts, and communications – but what occupations in those fields require a college degree? Those are career fields where employers typically value a college degree, but they also value demonstrated work experience. So if you equate being “underemployed” with having a job title that does not always require a college degree – then yes, the red bands get wider. </p>
<p>Simple illustration: I have a law degree. So any job I might take as a lawyer would fit within the blue band in the middle. But I stopped practicing law about 20 years ago, and shifted to doing something else that makes me a lot happier. (Less stress, flexible hours). No one needs a degree to do what I do now, though I would submit that a person would need to be pretty smart to get themselves to the level of responsibility I now enjoy. But the day I moved from “lawyer” to “director” of a small start-up was the day I also moved from the “degree required” to “no degree required.” I’d think that you would definitely want to do some correlations between the age and salary data represented in other charts and the degree vs. no degree chart to tease out some differentials. I mean – look at all those non-degreed people in the leisure and hospitality industry - perhaps they are very content with jobs that offer travel opportunities to all sorts of fun places. So what if you don’t need a degree to be a travel agent? Maybe a young person who majored in French or Italian in college still finds their education to be a pretty big asset for their line of work. </p>
<p>It’s not really surprising that recent college graduates’ unemployment is higher. On average, they have less experience and fewer skills, and are therefore in less demand. It’s not exactly rocket science to expect “finding a job tends to be more difficult for those just out of school.” Duh. It’s more interesting that the unemployment rate for a brand-new college graduate was still under 8% even at the height of the recession, and seems to be under 6% in 2012. It’s only two percentage points higher than the rate for all college graduates, which was about 4% in 2012.</p>
<p>Much more worrying is the double-digit unemployment rate for young workers without college degrees - nearly 16% at the height of the recession, and still about 13% in 2012.</p>
<p>I also agree with @calmom’s analysis of the underemployment, and I submit that part of the reason is because current recent grads are caught in the middle of a shift. For example, you don’t need a BA to be a flight attendant. But these days, it’s difficult to get a job as a flight attendant without one - my sister-in-law was a flight attendant for a short while and all of her newer colleagues had degrees. Now, the field may be dominated by people who started 5-10 years ago, and so more than 50 percent of them may say that you don’t need a BA to be a flight attendant - which is technically true wrt to the job skills but not true wrt actually getting hired by a major airline.</p>
<p>I think it’s probably similar in a lot of the fields social science, humanities, and natural/physical science majors work in. Also, note that business is smack in the middle - roughly the same percentage of business majors are considered “underemployed” as people who majored in the more traditional arts and sciences (with the exception of math).</p>
<p>The business juxtaposition is intriguing because no one needs a degree to run a business. That is, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t need to stay in school to earn a degrees as a prerequisite to starting their own companies - nor does the owner of a dry cleaning establishment need a degree. What they need to start is working capital and at least a gut level understanding of basic economic principles. Successful business owners often place high value on a college degree for the people they hire --but the degree they are hiring for may be very specialized functions, rather than a business degree. </p>
<p>I think the mistake in that particular chart on the survey is confusing the degree itself with the knowledge that the student has gained in the course of earning the degree. </p>
<p>The key point I took away was that currently employers seem to prefer candidates with specific abilities over soft skills, and there are many students in soft-skill majors that end up in jobs that are not what they expected.</p>
<p>The “underemployment” angle interests me. I wonder if the college grads in jobs that don’t require a degree did have better odds of landing the job because of what they learned in college. </p>
<p>One issue (and problem with those “underemployment” stats) is that a college degree often serves as a substitute for experience. You sometimes see job listings that say something like “3 years work experience or college degree required” - or listing the experience only with the notation, that a college degree is preferred but not required. </p>
<p>My son quit college after 2 years, and went to work at a job where they pretty much hire all comers, but he got promoted pretty quickly. So the position he ended holding after a few months on the job was one of those situations where the degree was “strongly preferred” - and he was a 21-year-old college dropout in the position of supervising recent college grades who were a couple of years older than him. I don’t think that means that the college grads were “underemployed” – it’s just that there were two paths to the same goal=-- the “work your way up” path and the “get a degree” path. </p>
<p>I don’t think the line really should be whether a degree is required for the job, but whether special education or skills are required. It can be a little fuzzy, but I think we would all see a difference between the recent college grad who gets a job working as an office assistant and one who is working waiting tables. The person working tables could very well be making more money after tips (depending on where they work) – but we probably would perceive the person going to an office every day as doing something more fitting with a liberal arts degree. </p>
<p>-* but we probably would perceive the person going to an office every day as doing something more fitting with a liberal arts degree*</p>
<p>And thats whats wrong with our society.
Many office jobs are the most mind numbing, soul sucking, brain killing ways to spend a life out there.</p>