One In Two College Graduates Are Jobless Or Underemployed

By on April 24, 2012 in News 36
Graduation Thinker

Illustration: lumaxart (CC)

Reports the AP via the Huffington Post:

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor’s degrees. While there’s strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Read More: AP via the Huffington Post

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  • Jin The Ninja

    now, wait for the anti-humanities trolls to prattle on with bad grammar: on how books, ideas and art are useless.

    • Zero

      you can still use some thin books to level wobbly furniture. 

    • Tenderizer

      “Now just wait for the anti-humanities trolls to prattle on with bad grammar on how books, ideas and art are useless.”Fixed your three grammatical errors.

      • Jin The Ninja

        i rarely use capitalisation. the comma, while perhaps extraneous, serves a purpose and is not an error. the colon is perfectly native in its current position.

        • asdf

           capitalization

          • Jin The Ninja

            actually i use british standard (aka cambridge standard) spelling, but nice try.

          • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

            Zing!

          • Adamsshadow

            It’s like 1920s Munich of the Grammarverse up in this bitch.

            “When listing three or more elements in a series, you do not place a comma after the second-to-last item! Never use a comma before the word ‘and’!  Sieg Heil!”

          • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

            if ya wanna get picky, you can, sometimes, put a comma  before “and”, in order to emphasize the pacing of the statement, but, i, tend, not, to, get, picky.

          • Adamsshadow

            :) Nice.

            Myself, I tend to overuse the shit out of commas, as phrases and clauses abound in my writing and in my everyday speech.

            Then there’s semi-colons; I love me some semi-colons.

          • Bungle

            captain obvious and grammar nazi all in one. didnt think it was possible. jin the ninja has one of the most extensive vocabularies i have ever seen, im impressed. how did you decide to rag on him for trying to save time while typing, by skipping the capitals that everyone knows are there any way. wow troll, you dumb and probably new to the internet. This is not grade school, we are free now, maybe he should write in ALL CAPS FOR A BETTER  RESPONSE FROM TROLLS. 

          • Jin The Ninja

            dude, thank you. i firmly believe in the subversion of grammar and orthographic ‘rules.’ rules as they say were meant to be…

          • Bungle

            Bro, if you were writing a book for profit or academic recognition fine. That’s where grammar can be taken into account to show that the work has been proof read and polished. But you are here, doing us a favor by bringing articles that entertain and inform, taking the time to follow up on comments and these trolls come here with nothing to say just to grammar. I don’t think so… If I were one of the admins of this site, I would delete dumb grammar bashing all day (to keep the intellectual status of the site safe from this crap). KEEP DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND IGNORE THE H8TERS. 

          • Bungle

            just to grammar bash****

        • Harlem Nocturne

          nice try, e e cummings.

          • Jin The Ninja

            not quite. although i recognise the affectation as being similar.

    • Mr Willow

      Well, of course. 

      You don’t need a book to tell you who your boss is, ideas not relevant to the task you are provided are detrimental to productivity, and art is only useful in decorating money or evoking a sense of national pride. 

    • Harlem Nocturne

      >the anti-humanities trolls

      “War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals… ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’ – this is the practical commandment of socialism…”

      • Harlem Nocturne

        Vladimir Lenin, “How To Organize Competition.”

        • Jin The Ninja

          lenin, among many other totalitarian leaders, was quite anti intellectual. not quite my position.

      • Jin The Ninja

        a leninist i am certainly NOT. nice try though.

    • Rock Lobstah

      if you studied something other than humanities, your professors might’ve taught you to avoid the “poisoning the well” fallacy.

      • Andrew

        Logic is part of philosophy, which is one of the humanities.

        • Jin The Ninja

          you WOULD think, a troll decrying the humanities, would in fact know the very term they use to deconstruct my argument, is derived from the humanities.

          i also noticed, that the same trolls and right wing posters rely heavily on the jargon of rhetorical philosophy, but seem to completely mis-understand its intent and/or proper usage.

      • Jin The Ninja

        oh i’m sorry, so you are positioning yourself as a scholar and advocate of the humanities? or perhaps what i said was true…

    • Markov Cheney

      You make this statement as if books, ideas and art are actually important to modern college students…

      • Jin The Ninja

         if those students are in the dwindling number of humanities programs, books/art/ideas are all they know.

  • Okarin

    ya need an education to get a one in two chance of being poor

  • Bungle

    I don’t understand how  government grants work completely,  but I hear they are given out once in a while.  I think all of these college grads that are trained in their fields, should pull together and start companies instead of waiting for some saturated company to decide to expand and hire them.  Its hard to compete with china when it comes to products, but America still needs people that provide services. I wont do all the creative thinking because that’s exhausting, but around here people are always looking for the latest hip retail place to attend, either being a coffee shop, a dance club, a bar, sports complex, pet store, oldie but goodie restaurant, hair salons, tattoo shops, and custom fine art creations that are really expensive to obtain from established artists, ice cream parlors to compete with ben and Jerry’s, and private security so you don’t have to call the pigs every time you feel you need protection. Alternatives to the cookie cutter places corporation cram down our throats. Sure things at first start slow, and at a loss, but its better than being inactive and depressed. Also day cares around where I live are booming, as moms need to go work as early as they can now. Art venues can also generate some income, and most importantly much needed culture and creative expression that everyone sane seems to love. Also alternative car rental services, that don’t need two credit cards and your liver before they let you drive out of the lot. Some immigrant communities here have had to do this, since many immigrants do not have credit cards yet, but still need to rent a car from time to time when their car breaks down.  Like I said, I am not going to do all the creative thinking, because I am way too humble to think that i know every business idea out there, but all I know is that this market is based on competition and we need to compete with the dinosaurs, even if we lose, instead of getting covered up in figurative chum (college diplomas) hoping one of them will eat us up.  I want to open an indoor turf complex if I ever get enough capital from my current sources of income. Its just a metal building and the people are really what makes the place fun, its also a way to bring the community together doing something healthy. I would be hiring some private security personal to keep those crazy overly competitive parents in their place.  

    We just need to compete with corporations. College grads need to create limited liability companies from government grants and loans if possible, doing basic services at first, so the consumer can invest in their own community instead of sending most of the money into some bank account in some tax haven. Look at Sam Adams, the guy started the company with money from his drinking buddies and now has 1% of a huge beer market, but he sells his beer at a premium price, generating tons of income.  People say don’t underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers. Well I say don’t underestimate the power of smart, educated but yet under valued people in large numbers. Those degrees are not just to secure a job, those degrees are there to bring you confidence in yourselves. The institutions are there just to do the professional testing on the chosen field of study (they are the officials, the refs). Not only so the ones  in a better position know you can do something in a professional level, but so YOU, the individual can become confident and know that you can truly do some great things once you put your mind and will power behind it. 

    Its all about who you know, but not in a shallow way as using people as stepping stones, that’s wrong and narcissistic. Get to know others in the same situation that are not fully successful yet, but who have skills that compliment your own, and create, its the only way.   Its time to self actualize and to bring everyone along for the party .

    Sorry if im a little long winded but this gets me inspired. ALL THE BEST GL HL  

  • justagirl

    i am falling under graduated and underemployed.  just got my first loan repayment bill yesterday.  guess who’s not paying it!!?  the whole reason for going to college was to get a job assholes.  if there’s no job there’s no repayment.  end of story!!  oh wait FUCK YOU!  end of story.

    • Jin The Ninja

       i think underemployment is the theme of our generation.

      • justagirl

        and hotpants…  

        • Jin The Ninja

          i’ll have to find mine….