Yesterday much was made of some numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the unemployment rates for those without high school educations, those with high school educations, those with some higher education, and those with college degrees and post-graduate education and degrees. James Joyner’s observations were a little more reserved:
The fact of the matter is that, for two generations or more, it’s simply expected that people graduate high school and strongly encouraged that people go on to college. So, the type of person who drops out of high school is likely the type of person who’s going to have a hell of a time holding a job because of personality factors.
I think that it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions from the data. First, roughly three quarters of people do not have degrees. Suggesting that if everybody got a college degree the overall unemployment rate would be lower is tantamount to suggesting that simply because they had degrees the economy would magically create jobs for them. It might. It might not. Contrariwise, if everybody in the United States got college degrees we might just have a higher level of debt and the best educated unemployed people and fast food workers in the world.
But more tellingly the number of people with college degrees or better is sufficiently small that growth in government, education, and healthcare, the fields that have seen the most growth in employment over the last decade, could account for most of the difference.
Federal government employment over about a GS-6 essentially requires a college degree. When you hear that the number of civilian workers for the federal government has increased, you’re hearing that they’re hiring college grads. I don’t think that positing continued employment through federal hiring is a good model for a healthy economy.
So, here’s my question. First, does anybody have access to figures that disaggregate unemployment among licensed professionals from unemployment among college grads, generally? The BLS figures don’t seem to do that.
Second, does anybody have access to figures that disaggregate unemployment among college grads, generally, from unemployment among college grads other than those who work for government, healthcare, or education?
No answers to your questions, but a partial defense of James’ remark:
“College graduates, who have the lowest unemployment rate, are now more than a third of the work force, compared with roughly 25% in 1983, says the Labor Department. Meanwhile, the share of high-school dropouts has shrunk to roughly 10% of the work force, from nearly 20% in 1983.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125970744553071829.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Nice graph at the bottom of the link. To my eye the “bonus protection” against unemployment provided by a college degree has lessened since 1983. Some of this is probably due to a slightly more educated workforce, but some of it is probably that the jobs aren’t there to meet the supply of women’s studies majors.
I wasn’t attacking James’s point, PD. Actually, I was half-heartedly defending it. However, I think it’s largely beside the point for a reason mentioned in the article: Simpson’s Paradox. Also note this quote from the article:
The emphasis is mine. IMO that’s structural rather than cyclic and will be darned hard to wring out as long as the powers-that-be are committed to holding on to the status quo ante like a drowning man to a life raft.
The graph at the bottom of the article, much like the one that James uses, illustrates the reason for my question. The difference between “College graduates” and “All adults” may be an artifact of how groups are combined within the “college graduates” category. It may be an artifact and you can’t tell from the data that’s being promulgated.
I think you just scuttled a big part of the Democratic Party’s platform. I recall hearing Democrats say something like this or that we need to get more people in college, as if that is some sort of cure all for unemployment, lower earnings, etc.
The Farber quote is odd because the data in the chart at the bottom of the page says that unemployment for all adults is still lower today (by 2/10ths of a percentage) than in 1983. Maybe Farber was prescient.
Along the lines of your inquiry, I would also like to see the benefits of “some education” disaggregated. Living in a community with a large public employment sector, union contracts tend to guarantee pay increases for each 30 or so hours of college credits, regardless of whether they have any relationship to their job or promotion.
The engineer in me asks is any of the data worth a rats ass?
Degrees have been watered down. Community college is glorified high school. 4 year degrees have become so prolific – how do we compare to 10, 20, 30 years ago??
PD (correctly) snarks: and just how does a degree in women’s studies pollute the analysis? I’m not looking to recruit any. And so it goes.
Separately, I’m wondering who ever said that more degrees was the solution to unemployment? I think the issue is more subtle. I’m thinking more degrees in the fields that have the potential for growth, and subsequently employment creation. Although I left the technical arena years ago, I still think that scientists and engineers – if they choose wisely – have bright prospects. And I’m not talking about yet another person who can write code. I’m thinking the life sciences in particular. By the way, I’m not thinking African studies, women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies and so on.
That stuff is all fine and well, but just don’t anyone think that anybody but college profs are looking to hire.
The closest data I’ve found is from the 2008 census report:
19.1% of the population has a bachelor’s degree
10.3% have an advanced degree
12.2% of those with a bachelor’s degree are unemployed (!?!)
4.5% of those with an advanced degree are unemployed
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0226.pdf
Mean earnings for these groups is:
$57,181 for bachelor’s degree
$70,186 for master’s degree
$120,978 for professional degree
$95,565 for doctorate
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0227.pdf
I’m surprised that about 35% of those with bachelor’s degrees have advanced degrees also. But a 12.2% unemployment rate for those with a four year degree in 2008 is incredible.
It would sure support my supposition, though, wouldn’t it?
Again, my underlying question is that, if growth in employment is predicated on the ability to restrict the market as is most certainly the case in government, education, and healthcare, it reasonably opens up an approach other than more education: limit entry in everything. If the ability to constrain the market is irrelevant to job and wage growth, why not stop constraining it?
It would hep if people stopped thinking of college as a trade school. Drew no longer works as an engineer, but he learned some of the skills he has, I am assuming, from those days. College should teach you how to learn more than anything else.
Steve
steve –
“College should teach you how to learn more than anything else.”
I have a very soft spot in my heart for that notion, for it is at the basic foundation of an engineering education: we’ll give you the tools, now go to the real world and figure things out. But I also have to note that there simply are skills that have to be taught from some book, or some guy/gal, in any profession.
But that is a separate notion from something that Dave has been positing, and I’ve been poking him in the ribs about. Now, let me be more strident.
Dave says: “Again, my underlying question is that, if growth in employment is predicated on the ability to restrict the market as is most certainly the case in government, education, and healthcare, it reasonably opens up an approach other than more education: limit entry in everything. If the ability to constrain the market is irrelevant to job and wage growth, why not stop constraining it?”
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read – and I’m chalking it up to a temporary brain cramp – ………coming from the guy who just informed us a few days ago that he’d only met perhaps one other guy he ever thought was smarter than him. Go figger.