LOST
GENERATION
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
“IT USED TO BE THAT COLLEGE
GRADUATES WERE THE ONES WHO WERE
BUYING NEW CARS AND NEW HOMES,
TAKING OUT MORTGAGES. NOW
IT’S COMPLETELY REVERSED ITSELF.”
seamstress for a temp agency.
The Great Recession and its far
from vigorous recovery have been
especially punishing for young
Americans. The unemployment rate
for 20- to 24-year-old workers is
about 13 percent, nearly double the
overall unemployment rate, according to the most recent data from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A college degree is generally considered the way to avoid joblessness, but the unemployment rate
for college graduates younger than
24 is 8.8 percent, up from 5.7 percent in 2007, according to a recent
Economic Policy Institute analysis
of federal census and labor data.
Young college graduates still
fare much better than those with
only a high school diploma, but
the EPI analysis found that large
numbers of young people with
college degrees are settling for
jobs below their skill levels.
Here, another measure comes in
handy — the so-called underemployment rate, which adds to the
jobless those who have accepted
part-time positions for lack of
available full-time work and those
who have simply stopped looking.
The underemployment rate for
college graduates is now 18.3 percent, up from 9.9 percent in 2007.
“A large swath of these young,
highly educated workers either
have a job but cannot attain the
hours they need, or want a job but
have given up looking for work,”
the EPI report found.
Jackson hasn’t given up, but she
is beginning to worry that her quest
is futile. All the while, her mountain of debt constrains not just her
future but that of her entire family.
Her mother, Laura Rupe-Jackson, is a school bus driver and preschool worker who carries about
$35,000 of the total $50,000 debt
burden. Jackson’s younger sister,
Julianna, is a high school senior.
An honors student, she dreams of
majoring in astrophysics at a toptier university. For her mother, this