Slow Caution.CreativeMarblesConsultancy2012

College Degrees Offer No Economic Guarantees

As executives at tech giants, like Facebook, Intel, Netflix, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, announce hiring freezes and layoffs, the technology sector may not be the stable and growing industry with ever-lasting employment opportunities that many students and their parents have been promoting. To add insult to injury, new computer science grads (aged 22-27 years old) already encounter competition for jobs,…

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Challenging Employment Prospects for Class of 2021 Grads

Class of 2020 and 2021 college grads, anxious to shop their abilities amongst employers, will confront a complex labor market post the 2020 COVID-influenced economic meltdown.   As Class of 2021 graduates emerge from the chrysalis of college, seeking entry into the professional class, they may instead queue up behind the 45% of their Class of 2020 peers who are still…

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Uncommonly Common Advice for Graduates Seeking Collaboration instead of More Competition

As new college grads join the ranks of the career-minded, dutifully employed professional, hopeful yet apprehensive in the concomitant uncertainty, I’m sharing advice from Avni, who’s a few years post college graduation. Her wisdom as she reflected on her few years working full time wrangling adulthood, then wondering what if… I would give two pieces of advice to anyone who…

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College Isn’t a Cure-All

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Becky Frankiewicz writing for the Harvard Business Review (HBR) tackled the topic of higher education and full employment leaving out, for now, the idea of a lasting peace of mind. Of course, although there may be a multi-decade correlation between a college degree and three or less careers in one’s lifetime, equaling financial security, or as we…

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Career Planning Is Less Planning and More Trusting Instinct

Many students (and their parents) believe that applying to college begins by choosing a career that will align with one of the many majors on the pull down list of most digital college applications, often wrongly assuming that college is little more than a sophisticated form of job training required in order to achieve lasting prosperity.  Typically, deciding on a career…

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Labor Market Mirage

In February 2020, approximately 165 million people were employed out of an approximate civilian population of 250 million Americans.  In the economic recession of March 2020, 20 million jobs were lost. Since then, in the interim 12 months, only 10 millions jobs were re-created, leaving 10 million people still seeking employment. Of that 10 million, roughly 4 million people have…

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Comedy: College Vs. Job Market

College Grads Confronted by Diminished Employment Prospects

Many soon-to-be college graduates—in a time of economic upheaval and pandemic induced doubt—fatalistic and full of dread can relate to the most recent college student-produced meme.   Currently, unemployment and underemployment of new college grads is increasing, and gateways to employment like internships and other extracurricular activities are drying up or are suspended at closed or severely-restricted campuses resulting in fewer…

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Chart: Underemployment Rates for College Graduates, September 2020

Watch Out Below

The most recent underemployment figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicating that 43% of 22-27 year old college graduates who are working in jobs that do not require their university degrees, show a nearly 2% increase from February 2020, pre-COVID economic disruption. Yet, as college graduates are usually the last cohort to be more widely affected in…

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2020 COVID-Induced Retreat

First, in Spring 2020, as we retreated into our homes concerned for the health risks of contracting COVID, we re-centered our lives. Following stringent social distancing guidelines, we imported the world to our personal fiefdoms. Thus, we’re spending more on groceries to prepare our own meals, purchasing cable and satellite TV for news and entertainment, and cleaning products attempting to…

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Income Inequality Continues to Expand

The difficulties for those in the younger generations to generate wealth are consequences of a structural shift in the U.S. economy in the last forty years, well before today’s late Boomer and Gen X parents entered the labor market as twenty-somethings. As highlighted in a recent Federal Reserve Bank research paper, “Market Power, Inequality, and Financial Instability”, Isabel Cairo &…

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