An east coast friend with a 23-year-old son who graduated from college this past spring writes:
"Last spring after graduation, my son got a job offer with an accounting firm in Dallas. He had to study for his CPA, so he was home for the summer. One evening, a group of his friends came over. They were sitting out on the deck drinking cokes and beer, and I knew they were looking at my son with envy. He was moving to Dallas, he was going to live in his own apartment, he just bought a car--and he had a job in his profession. That used to the standard for kids coming out of college--especially good colleges like these kids had just graduated from. But most of them were living at home with no job prospects. A few had found something but not in their career."
This has been the new reality for college grads, and this is what the data recently released by the Census Bureau underlies. While the economy has been devastating for those living in or near poverty, it has also been wrenching for recent college graduates. Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, has suggested that the generation coming out of college since the 2008-2009 recession "will be scarred, and they will be called the `lost generation'--in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster."
They have not only been unable to find jobs now, it's not likely to get better soon--even as the employment figures pick up. Recent college grads who are now getting by with waitering, bartending and odd jobs will have to compete with new graduates for entry-level career positions. As Andrew Sum, an economist and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, put it, "We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers."
Here's hoping the latest downward trend on unemployment--8.3% in January--keeps going. It might make it possible for another friend's son to come home from his job in volatile South Sudan--a job he took not because he always wanted to go to Juba but because it was the only job he could get.
