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Why is it so tough for a young person with a college degree, that's who's getting hurt right now, why is it so hard for them right now?
**Prof G Markets Podcast 06/13/2025**
**Hosts** Scott and Ed
**Guest:** Katherine Anne Edwards, PhD Economist, Economic Policy Consultant, Columnist for Bloomberg News, and Co-host of "Optimist Economy" Podcast
**Ed Elson:**
Some data that I found really interesting from the jobs report. One super interesting what you say about what's happening in healthcare where that's basically what's leading the report and what it really tells us is that America is just very old and sick, which is not great. But the other thing that I found really interesting is that employment for young people with college degrees is at its lowest level in years. And this is some other data from LinkedIn, which is that entry-level hiring is down 23% compared to March 2020. If you're a recent grad and you're part of Gen Z, that's my generation, your unemployment rate right now is 1% higher than the rest of the working population. So what is going on with the job market for young people and for entry-level workers? **Why is it so tough for a young person with a college degree, that's who's getting hurt right now, why is it so hard for them right now?**
**Katherine Anne Edwards:**
The unemployment rate of young people is always higher than the unemployment rate of older people. And the less experience you have, the harder it can be to be hired. So this is a typical relationship between the unemployment rates. Young people, even if they have a college degree, have higher unemployment rates. But it's the highest in years. So, the positive spin on this that I would be remiss if I didn't bring up is that the unemployment rate being higher amongst young people does have good interpretations. Like in your first 5 years out of college, you should go find a bunch of different jobs. You should figure out what you like. You should constantly be searching. If something doesn't fit, we consider it to be a really beneficial, intense period of learning about the labor market that's associated with a lot of job jumps as well as a lot of wage growth. And so if you are looking for a job more often, you will have a higher unemployment rate. So there's an argument here that it's not all bad. But of course, younger people with less experience will have the hardest time in a recession getting hired. And what we are seeing is really these two labor markets that I told you about, the labor market for people with a job and the labor market for people who want one. The labor market for people who want one looks much more like a recession, and you would not expect the unemployment rate to be so low overall.
So all of that said, as preface, one of the most interesting studies in the Great Recession about unemployment and job search was that this group of economists looked at job postings and the educational requirements and experience requirements for them. And they looked at how that varied for the same job based on the unemployment rates. And it goes exactly how you would expect in an unfortunate way for young people, which is that when the unemployment rate is high and a lot of people are looking for jobs, a job that two years ago required a college degree and no experience would require a master's with five years of experience. And you would see these jumps in what you needed in an entry-level job as the unemployment rate got up. I think what we're seeing now is a version of that without the unemployment rate going up, that there are a lot of people looking for jobs. The hiring rate is low and you're seeing just this bar being higher even though the unemployment rate is still low. It's a historically odd labor market for unemployment and hiring to be declining in their typical patterns.
I can say for Gen Zers like yourself, I am deeply empathetic having graduated from college in 2007 and looking for a job in 2008 and 2009. It's a really harrowing awful experience to feel like the labor market is telling you through every application you send out the door that you don't hear anything back, that you are not good enough. Even the best students, I mean, these MBA students at Stanford and Harvard, no one can find a job right now. I've seen it in the data and then I also have friends who go to these schools and they literally can't find a job. It's unbelievable to me. And I think that because the rest of the economy is not experiencing it, it's really easy to minimize other people's experience because it's not yours. And unemployment in particular is something that America has been, I think, verging on cruelly unempathetic. We make it easier for me as a person with a job to say if you can't find one it's because of your own personal failing, like you're not working hard enough, you're not searching hard enough, you weren't a hard worker to begin with, or maybe your degree was no good. Because if you were a hard worker who searched really well for a job, who put yourself out there, who has a good degree and you can't find one, that means I'm at risk too. And there's this degree of self-preservation that people bring to the labor market that if they admit really good, hardworking people can be out of luck, it means they could too. And so it's easier instead to say people who aren't doing well simply aren't as good as me because the consequences of them being just as good are pretty scary. And so I would say to the Gen Zers who can't find a job, you would be right in being suspicious that there's a lack of empathy for your position, and that it's a lot easier to just blame you for being on TikTok than it is to understand that you are representing a fundamental weakness in the US labor market right now.
#business
source
**Prof G Markets Podcast 06/13/2025**
**Hosts** Scott and Ed
**Guest:** Katherine Anne Edwards, PhD Economist, Economic Policy Consultant, Columnist for Bloomberg News, and Co-host of "Optimist Economy" Podcast
**Ed Elson:**
Some data that I found really interesting from the jobs report. One super interesting what you say about what's happening in healthcare where that's basically what's leading the report and what it really tells us is that America is just very old and sick, which is not great. But the other thing that I found really interesting is that employment for young people with college degrees is at its lowest level in years. And this is some other data from LinkedIn, which is that entry-level hiring is down 23% compared to March 2020. If you're a recent grad and you're part of Gen Z, that's my generation, your unemployment rate right now is 1% higher than the rest of the working population. So what is going on with the job market for young people and for entry-level workers? **Why is it so tough for a young person with a college degree, that's who's getting hurt right now, why is it so hard for them right now?**
**Katherine Anne Edwards:**
The unemployment rate of young people is always higher than the unemployment rate of older people. And the less experience you have, the harder it can be to be hired. So this is a typical relationship between the unemployment rates. Young people, even if they have a college degree, have higher unemployment rates. But it's the highest in years. So, the positive spin on this that I would be remiss if I didn't bring up is that the unemployment rate being higher amongst young people does have good interpretations. Like in your first 5 years out of college, you should go find a bunch of different jobs. You should figure out what you like. You should constantly be searching. If something doesn't fit, we consider it to be a really beneficial, intense period of learning about the labor market that's associated with a lot of job jumps as well as a lot of wage growth. And so if you are looking for a job more often, you will have a higher unemployment rate. So there's an argument here that it's not all bad. But of course, younger people with less experience will have the hardest time in a recession getting hired. And what we are seeing is really these two labor markets that I told you about, the labor market for people with a job and the labor market for people who want one. The labor market for people who want one looks much more like a recession, and you would not expect the unemployment rate to be so low overall.
So all of that said, as preface, one of the most interesting studies in the Great Recession about unemployment and job search was that this group of economists looked at job postings and the educational requirements and experience requirements for them. And they looked at how that varied for the same job based on the unemployment rates. And it goes exactly how you would expect in an unfortunate way for young people, which is that when the unemployment rate is high and a lot of people are looking for jobs, a job that two years ago required a college degree and no experience would require a master's with five years of experience. And you would see these jumps in what you needed in an entry-level job as the unemployment rate got up. I think what we're seeing now is a version of that without the unemployment rate going up, that there are a lot of people looking for jobs. The hiring rate is low and you're seeing just this bar being higher even though the unemployment rate is still low. It's a historically odd labor market for unemployment and hiring to be declining in their typical patterns.
I can say for Gen Zers like yourself, I am deeply empathetic having graduated from college in 2007 and looking for a job in 2008 and 2009. It's a really harrowing awful experience to feel like the labor market is telling you through every application you send out the door that you don't hear anything back, that you are not good enough. Even the best students, I mean, these MBA students at Stanford and Harvard, no one can find a job right now. I've seen it in the data and then I also have friends who go to these schools and they literally can't find a job. It's unbelievable to me. And I think that because the rest of the economy is not experiencing it, it's really easy to minimize other people's experience because it's not yours. And unemployment in particular is something that America has been, I think, verging on cruelly unempathetic. We make it easier for me as a person with a job to say if you can't find one it's because of your own personal failing, like you're not working hard enough, you're not searching hard enough, you weren't a hard worker to begin with, or maybe your degree was no good. Because if you were a hard worker who searched really well for a job, who put yourself out there, who has a good degree and you can't find one, that means I'm at risk too. And there's this degree of self-preservation that people bring to the labor market that if they admit really good, hardworking people can be out of luck, it means they could too. And so it's easier instead to say people who aren't doing well simply aren't as good as me because the consequences of them being just as good are pretty scary. And so I would say to the Gen Zers who can't find a job, you would be right in being suspicious that there's a lack of empathy for your position, and that it's a lot easier to just blame you for being on TikTok than it is to understand that you are representing a fundamental weakness in the US labor market right now.
#business
source
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| 10,000 mlx | |
| 18 | |
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