jobs

CEPR: People Living Below the Income Poverty Line Today are Better Educated than Ever

/ The Old Crank

Last April,  the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published Low Wage Workers Are Older and Better Educated than Ever, an issue brief showing that the average low-wage worker today is both older and much better educated than the average low-wage worker was in the past.

Yesterday, Shawn Fremstad noted on CEPR’s blog that, in addition, the number of middle-aged workers living below the poverty line with at least some college or a Bachelor’s Degree has nearly doubled between 1979 and 2010. In addition, the number of middle-aged workers living below the poverty line without a high school diploma has dropped by nearly 50% during that same period. Fremstad looks at this data nd concludes:

Increasing educational attainment by itself is not at all sufficient to reduce inequality and income poverty — we need stronger labor market institutions, particularly ones that increase workers bargaining power to address these issues.

Quote of the Day

/ The Old Crank

“[E]very way you cut it — by race or gender, with or without a college degree — young people are just not getting the job opportunities they need, and it will have a lasting impact on their careers,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist who studies the labor market at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. (my emphasis)

The quote comes from a story in the New York Times a couple of groups that are working on this issue: the Campaign for Young America and Fix Young America.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Claims There Is a “Surplus” of Skilled Workers in U.S.

/ The Old Crank

From an April 2nd NEWS.com.au story on the Australian government’s plan to fill Australian jobs with U.S. workers (which, according to the story, is supported by Australian and U.S. business groups):

“In contrast to the surplus of skilled workers in the US, Australia has intensifying skill shortages and comparatively low unemployment,” said a joint statement from the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia, the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (Amcham), and the US Chamber of Commerce. (my emphasis)

Older, Long-Term Unemployed May Lose Education Advantage

/ The Old Crank

Overall, the unemployment rate for workers with a college degree is about half the rate of those who hold just a high school diploma, but that gap appears to narrow for older, long-term unemployed workers. From an article by Arthur Delaney in The Huffington Post yesterday:

[A]dvanced degrees can lose their talismanic power. Once they become unemployed, college-educated workers are just as likely as high school grads to wind up unemployed for an extended period of time. During the year ending last June, 12.4 percent of jobless workers with high school diplomas had been out of work 99 weeks or longer, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Among unemployed Americans with a bachelor’s degree, 11.3 percent had been jobless 99 weeks or longer — a statistically insignificant difference. (my emphasis)

Delaney speculates that one of the reasons for this statistical narrowing is that workers with just a high school education are more likely to leave the labor force, which then reduces the proportion of those workers who count as officially unemployed. Another possibility, he writes, is that that “since a majority of new jobs created during the economic recovery are lower-paying and lower-skilled, they are easier for less-educated workers to learn, while higher-educated workers are simultaneously being more selective about the jobs they’re willing to work.”