Employment Outlook

College graduates see pay drop 7.6% in last six years, report says - Shan Li

Between 2000 and 2012, the wages of fresh college grads dropped 8.5%, a roughly $3,200 decline for full-time workers. In the last six years alone, their pay fell 7.6%, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.

Last year, college grads earned an average $16.60 an hour -- about $34,500 a year.

“The wages of young graduates fared poorly even before the Great Recession began,” the report said. “They saw no growth over the entire period of general wage stagnation that began during the business cycle of 2000-2007.”

Millennial Double Whammy

The Millennial double-whammy = debt + no income

Harvard: Just 6 in 10 Millennials have jobs, half are part-time - Paul Bedard

A comprehensive new Harvard University report on Americans under 30, the so-called Millennials, shows that the economy is having a crushing impact, with just 62 percent working, and of those, half are toiling at part-time jobs.

The report, released by Harvard's Institute of Politics, paints a depressing economic portrait of young Americans, many of whom are stuck with huge college tuition bills and little chance of finding a high-paying job.

But over half, or 59 percent of those aged 18-29, have gone to college and The report reveals that time in college is a better sign of social status than income, mostly because jobs aren't available.

Check list for those just starting out:

[ ] Learn the word "retrench"
[ ] Avoid debt
[ ] Find a lucrative career-path (whether you go to college or not)
[ ] Start saving

Texas Business Climate

The Lone Star Jobs Surge - WSJ Editorial

What explains this Lone Star success? Texas is a big state, but its population of 24.7 million isn't that much bigger than the Empire State, about 19.5 million. California is a large state too—36.9 million—and yet it's down 11,400 jobs. Mr. Fisher argues that Texas is doing so well relative to other states precisely because it has rejected the economic model that now prevails in Washington, and we'll second that notion.

Mr. Fisher notes that all states labor under the same Fed monetary policy and interest rates and federal regulation, but all states have not preformed equally well. Texas stands out for its free market and business-friendly climate.

Capital—both human and investment—is highly mobile, and it migrates all the time to the places where the opportunities are larger and the burdens are lower. Texas has no state income tax. Its regulatory conditions are contained and flexible. It is fiscally responsible and government is small. Its right-to-work law doesn't impose unions on businesses or employees. It is open to global trade and competition: Houston, San Antonio and El Paso are entrepôts for commerce, especially in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Rick Perry vs. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Roger Kimball

Here’s an statistic worth pondering: 45 percent of net U.S. job creation in the last two years comes from Texas.

Yes, Texas: the state that is the poster child for right-wingery, the state with no state income tax whose population is growing at about 1000 per day (see a connection?) while bankrupt behemoths like California are bleeding jobs and people.

Companies Leaving California in Record Numbers - Mark J. Perry

California currently ranks #49 among U.S. states for "business tax climate" (Tax Foundation) and #48 for for "economic freedom" (Mercatus). It shouldn't be any surprise then that companies are leaving the "Golden State" in record numbers this year (see chart above) for "golder pastures" and more business-friendly climates in other states.

From Joe Vranich:

"Today, California is experiencing the fastest rate of disinvestment events based on public domain information, closure notices to the state, and information from affected employees in the three years since a specialized tracking system was put into place. Out-of-state economic development officials are traveling through the state to alert frustrated business owners and corporate executives to their friendlier business climate versus California's hostility toward commercial enterprises.

Employment After College

Plato and Thucydides are all well and good, but if you're going to spend all of that time and money on college, make wise practical decisions too:

1. Make sure that you graduate with realistic prospects for earning enough money to support (or help support) a family.
2. Don't get buried under a mountain of consumer and student loan debt.
3. Do something you really like to do.
4. Life has ups and downs, but quality work is generally recognized and rewarded.
5. Always keep learning.
   

The “Careers” of College Graduates - Daniel Luzer

In an update, of sorts, to the recent post about the influence of the Recession on current college graduates, Ezra Klein over at the Washington Post is letting us know that it’s actually even worse. Two charts explain it:

A HIGHER ED BUBBLE? - Glenn Reynolds

This sounds familiar:

So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.

Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn’t ask borrowers to verify their incomes.