Thursday, May 14, 2015

Millennials Are Ditching College and Heading Back to the Workplace



Bloomberg reports:
In a sign of a stronger economy, more young adults are skipping college and heading back to work.
College enrollment in the spring semester dropped 2 percent from the year before, to 18.6 million, according to a report being released Thursday by the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The steepest drop was among students in their mid-20s and older who are re-entering the workforce. 
The idea that we are not in the boom phase of the Fed created boom-bust cycle does not fit the facts. The Federal Reserve is aggressively printing money. According to the method I use to calculate money supply growth, as reported in the EPJ Daily Alert, money growth is now at a 7.7% annual rate. The developments in college enrollment dovetail well with the money growth, as does the overall unemployment figure.


  -RW

3 comments:

  1. "...In a sign of a stronger economy, more young adults are skipping college and heading back to work..."

    Or, in a sign that they are waking up and questioning conventional wisdom, especially in light of the extraordinary direct outlays for tuition and the high opportunity cost of college indoctrination and its resultant debt enslavement, more young adults are skipping college and heading back to work.

    I do not trust the unemployment rate graph; there are two numbers subject to 'discretion.' I trust the absolute numbers graphs, which -- when viewed over the past 10 years -- show that total employment is up compared to peak in 2007 but that full-time employment is down compared to peak in 2007:
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CE16OV
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS12500000

    There are fewer people working in full-time jobs compared to peak in 2007. No wonder spending is flat and Millenials are drifting away from college; the income base and job opportunities are not there.

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  2. how is "boom" defined, according to austrian analysis? what percentage of money printing constitutes a boom? what about money velocity? who's getting this newly created money, and is it seeing its way into the general economy, or is it sitting as excess reserves in the banking system, with the addition of some speculative spill-over in equities, high-value assets, and vencap for San Francisco start-ups? I think citing government statistics that purport to describe the macro-economic environment is not thoroughly persuasive on its own. anarcho-capitalists know that the government is capable of lying about anything and everything (and that it usually does).

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  3. It appears to me there is an asset bubble in equities, real estate and bonds. As far as a bubble or boom in the real economy is concerned, well commodities just got off the floor after being pounded for years, so to say the real economy is growing would not bear scrutiny because commodities like copper, lumber and oil have been crushed.

    These are real goods used in the real economy with prices not statistics and they can only be sold at very low prices relative to the 5-10 years. ago. This is no boom in the "real" economy. At best its been flat as a board.

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