Saturday, October 8, 2011

Wages Falling for Young College Graduates

The decline from 2000 to 2010 in inflation-adjusted median earnings of people 25 to 34 years old with a bachelor’s degree and no graduate degree is 9.6%, according to Yale School of Management economist Lisa Kahn, reports WSJ.

This dovetails with my thinking that increased regulation and regime uncertainty does not stop employers from hiring, but rather results in downward pressure on wages.

Regime uncertainty means greater risk. Increased risk does not mean a businessman will fail to start a project, but he will do so only where the risk to him is reduced, often by paying less in wages.

According to the Census Bureau, says WSJ, the median annual earnings of a worker 25 to 34 years old with a bachelor’s degree (but no graduate degree) was $40,875 last year. That compares with $45,200 in 2000, adjusting for inflation.

4 comments:

  1. In my county a kid that is 19 and out of the police academy can start at our sheriff's office at $47,000 and will be a multi-millionaire by age 49 when he retires with 90% of his pay for life and a tax free lump sum payout of around $500,000. Only problem is that you have to know someone to even get an interview. Fire Rescue is even harder but the pay is much higher and you can have a second job and make even more. Why work from the man when you can get a job that steals from him? LOL

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  2. Wages are falling for young college graduates is a generalized and ambiguous statement.

    Wages are falling for young college graduates "without engineering or science degrees is a true statement.

    With regard to technical degrees, wages have gone up.

    And even then it depends on the degree. I don't think you need to look past supply and demand for this investigation. One of this administration's goals (and past) was to flood the market with bachelor's degrees, and our president was successful in that. The result is a market flooded with less practical degrees while demand has stayed the same or even decreased. No surprise they are being paid less.

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  3. What do they study? I'm sure they aren't worth even $40K.

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  4. Most of those degrees are worse than useless and private companies spend a lot of time and money deprogramming the little dears...Time and money they no longer have or want to spend in this competitive world. 12 years in a government indoctrination camp and then 4 years partying...err...Memorizing worthless crap the government deems relevant...You can be a government employee or teacher...That's about it.

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