Not a college grad? No job recovery for you
Workers with degrees benefit far more from economic improvement than those without them.
Hey you, the know-it-all who laughed at college grads throughout the recession and called their degrees worthless: Let us know what the verdicts were on "Judge Joe Brown" today.
Despite the lusty anti-intellectual choruses that served as the soundtrack to the recent economic downturn, an increasing amount of evidence shows that a college degree or advanced version thereof actually comes in pretty handy.
Yes, there were more master's degree and doctorate holders on food stamps during the downturn than ever before, but they still made up just 1% of aid recipients and are now benefiting most from the ensuing economic recovery.
About 1.1 million more workers with master's, doctoral and professional degrees said they had jobs in 2012 than when the job market bottomed out in 2010. That's a 6.7% increase that, according to the Labor Department, is the fastest employment gain of any level of education during that span. Workers with bachelor's degrees didn't fare too badly, either, as their employment rate increased 5% from 2010 to 2012.
That's helping boost recent jobless numbers, as first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell by 5,000 last week to 330,000. That's the lowest level since January 2008. That doesn't mean everybody's getting back into the game, though. The 36% of American workers over 25 with a high school education or less started losing jobs in 2007 and just haven't stopped. About 767,000 fewer workers reported having a job in 2012 than they did in 2010, and 2 million workers in that demographic left the job market altogether during that span.
"Relative demand for highly educated workers is increasing," Jonathan Rothwell, senior research associate at the Brookings Institution, told CNNMoney. "There's a long-run shift in the economy toward more professional occupations, and it's mostly at the expense of blue-collar occupations."
Though many overqualified college graduates took low-wage jobs during the recession, Rothwell noted that over-educated workers earn 37% more than under-educated workers in the same field, and nearly always have lower unemployment rates. As of December, the Labor Department's unemployment rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher was 3.9%. Among high school graduates with no college experience, that rate jumped to 8%, while 11.7% of workers without a college degree went jobless.
Again, college degrees don't guarantee employment. They just make it a whole lot likelier.
More on moneyNOW
To say that these grads are better off and will be better off is misleading. I have yet to not find a college grad who is not working in a unrelated, non degree position due to not being able to find a job that they were convinced they would get if they went to college.
Well i hate to burst your bubble, but not going to University/College was the best thing I ever did..
I started out with not a dime to my name, at 18.
Now at 29, I have my own business, turning over a healthy profit, and have no debt aside from a mortgage on my awesome riverside apartment. I drive a new car, owned outright.
I employ other graduates who not only have the unenviable position of paying back a house-worth of debt, but coming out at 22-23 have no real world experience under their belt where as I now have 11years solid experience. If myself and one of these grads go up for the same role, all the employer would care about in the real world is; Who is more experienced and who is best qualified to do the job required? If i'm hiring for a developer role, do i want a college grad with no experience or someone with no degree but a wealth of successful deliveries under their belt?
Being in business isn't about having a nice degree; it's about making money and you either have that skill or you don't .. and no college degree can teach you that valuable lesson! :)
We are not in recovery.. Those numbers don't reflect seasonal hiring during the holidays. California still has high unemployment numbers. Getting a degree will not give you a leg up when companies are looking to hire in at the lowest dollar possible. The problem is people are starting to accept low wages as the new norm. Employers are milking this desperation and exploiting it. I know former collegues working for peanuts now who used to make six figures. Their skills are the same now as then only this recession has made fear a useful tool to exploit. Our economy will never recover fully if we are a nation of low wage service workers.
EDUCATION IS AN ANSWER?
Education is necessary but not sufficient condition to manage modern technological economy. There are only so many people needed to feel high production less human capital jobs.
To solve education we need a revolution. Current system is cumbersome, costly and inefficient. We need people with finding solutions from information data base. We need self actualized guidance driven teaching where teacher is a guide and not a static bureaucrat who generally is a baby sitter who lethargically at slow space lectures that if student want to learn, learn or do not.
Education should be much much cheaper when most of the info is on internet. We also need to free up information from artificial barriers. There should be lot shorter time limit on ownership of proprietary information, trademarks, patents.
We need to train some of our students in foreign countries. FOreign countries can train doctors for 50000 dollars. We need 500,000. We have shortage of doctors and greater shortage in minority community. We can afford to train qualified blacks , hispanics in foreign countries at much cheaper cost and serve those communities better. By sending our students on much larger scale to foreign courtiers we create know how of needs and way of conducting business there and increase our future potential for export and product design.
This is not a place for whole article but above is the general direction we need to go.
Colleges and the Alum force this (College Degree) requirement on corporations and our society. Corporations will not interview or even accept resumes from any candidate without a college degree. As a small business owner my best talent doesn't have a college degree. We are a white collar company and require skilled people with a high level of accountability and skill. I have fired 5 college grads in the past 4 months as the non grads out perform on every skill level versus the college grads.
My views are shared by many in the business community, as I see too many lazy, underperforming college grads who take for granted their degree gives them a leg-up.....in my book personal character, performance and accountability is what I value.....not a college degree....
I am sure there are lots of companies standing in line to hire English, or Art history majors, or the like.
I have a two year degree and have been more successful through out the years than most college grads I know. It is WHICH degree you get. But I guess if your looking for someone to flip burgers, it would be nice if they can quote Shakespeare.
So what do we do with the people who either can't afford a degree or don't have the IQ to get one? There are thousands of them. Also, if everyone has a degree you will have 5,000 applicants for 50 jobs good luck there.
When will business learn that the real cost for cheap products, not made in the US? They take the jobs from americans who need them and then *itch because they don't get a job. Makes me wonder what end of their body they are talking out.
At that point, a College Degree will be much like a HS Diploma was here in the 20th Century, and the greatest opportunities may just lie in countries with lesser academic resources - China being one of them. In 40 years of working various jobs, it has usually been much more Who-You-Know, than What-You-Know, to get, keep, and advance in most professional positions.
DATA PROVIDERS
Copyright © 2013 Microsoft. All rights reserved.
Quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX. See delay times for other exchanges.
Fundamental company data and historical chart data provided by Thomson Reuters (click for restrictions). Real-time quotes provided by BATS Exchange. Real-time index quotes and delayed quotes supplied by Interactive Data Real-Time Services. Fund summary, fund performance and dividend data provided by Morningstar Inc. Analyst recommendations provided by Zacks Investment Research. StockScouter data provided by Verus Analytics. IPO data provided by Hoover's Inc. Index membership data provided by SIX Financial Information.
Japanese stock price data provided by Nomura Research Institute Ltd.; quotes delayed 20 minutes. Canadian fund data provided by CANNEX Financial Exchanges Ltd.
RECENT POSTS
Tired of constantly dying batteries, she came up with a device that could revolutionize energy storage -- and won $50,000 from Intel.
- Detroit in hot water over proposal to sell art
- Sears spirals toward oblivion
- Why aren't heads rolling at the IRS?
- Do we pay attention to roads and bridges now?
- Yahoo may be going after Hulu
- Apple's first computer could fetch $450,000
- AT&T adds sneaky fee onto its wireless bills
- Soaring ER use adds more pain to health costs
- Netflix gets 'Arrested Development' stars cheap
MARKET UPDATE
[BRIEFING.COM] Stocks entered the weekend on a mixed note as the S&P 500 shed 0.1% while the Dow ended with a gain of 0.1%.
The major averages began the day on a lower note as nine of ten sectors saw losses of more than 0.5%.
The consumer staples sector was the lone exception as the group spent the entire day in positive territory thanks to the relative strength of Dow component Procter & Gamble (PG 81.89, +3.19). The second-largest staple stock advanced ... More
More Market News
TOP STOCKS
Try as the bears might, they couldn't break U.S. stocks. But investors still face frothy prices and considerable headwinds.
MSN MONEY'S
- Shared
- Commented
- Viewed
