Weekend Economists Volvemos a Puerto Rico May 22-25, 2015

[MattSh]

37. The Youth Recession: The New Normal For Young Workers - The Atlantic

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about the labor market for a longer forthcoming piece, and one of the mysteries I’ve been grappling with is: How do you describe how this economy is treating young people?

Let’s start by singing the necessary praises. Last year was was the best for job-creation this century. We’re in the middle of the longest uninterrupted stretch of private-sector job creation on record. After creating mostly low-paying service jobs for the first few years of the recovery, the labor market is finally churning out more high-skill jobs. All of these things should be great news for young people.

Should.

But a deeper look at the Young-American Economy today suggests that, in contrast to the overall labor market, it is still sort of terrible.

To start with the camera lens zoomed all the way out: The majority of young people aren’t graduating from a four-year university. Rather they are dropping out of high school, graduating from high school and not going to college, or dropping out of college. Millennial is often used, in the media, as a synonym for “bachelor-degree-holding young person,” but about 60 percent of this generation doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree.

Complete story at - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-new-normal-for-young-workers/393560/