Recessions and job prospects

[Corbett]

<p>

There’s an interesting article in The New Republic that takes a look at articles from earlier recessions where highly educated people were having trouble finding the type of work they thought they should be doing.</p>

<p>Near thirty years later, it turns out that their prospects were not always as dismal as they had feared

</p>

<p>The article is interesting, but fails to address two noteworthy differences between then and now: </p>

<p>(1) today’s students tend to carry much higher levels of student loan debt, since college costs have risen much faster than inflation, and</p>

<p>(2) today’s students (unlike those of the past) completely lack the ability to discharge such debt through bankruptcy.</p>

<p>In the past, underemployed college grads had to start at the ground floor before the could work their way up.</p>

<p>But many of today’s underemployed college grads have it even worse – because of their debt, they are starting from deep in a hole.</p>