{"id":6097,"date":"2009-12-26T17:53:22","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T02:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6097"},"modified":"2009-12-29T18:23:19","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T03:23:19","slug":"2009-in-review-graduating-from-college-in-a-bad-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6097","title":{"rendered":"2009 in review: Graduating from college in a bad economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

2009 will probably be best remembered for the “Great Recession.” And for those who graduate from college this year, the recession may continue for many years.<\/p>\n

Lisa Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, believes that graduating from college in the middle of an economic downturn has serious long-term effects. In her paper, “The Long-Term Labor Market Consequences of Graduating from College in a Bad Economy,”<\/a> she takes data from a longitudinal study of white males who graduated from college between 1979 and 1989, and analyzes the data to see what effect, if any, the serious recession of the early 1980s had on the job prospects of these people. Not surprisingly, she found immediate “negative wage effects” for those who graduated in the worst years of the recession — common sense dictates that when you enter the job market for the first time during a recession, you’re lucky to find a job at all, let alone find a job that pays well.<\/p>\n

Kahn also found that those negative wage effects persisted through the entire period of the longitudinal study. The people who graduated from college during a recession never made as much money as those who graduated during better economic times. This does not augur well for those who just graduated from college — or for anyone just entering the job market for the first time during the Great Recession. <\/p>\n

I worry about those entering the job market right now, because I was one of those who graduated from college during the recession of the early 80s. [Update: But see Jean’s comment below for another view<\/a>.<\/em>] To a large extent I fit that pattern that Kahn describes in her paper. I had great difficulty finding a job right after graduation, and I wound up spending more than a dozen years working in jobs that did not require a college diploma. For a few years during that time I had a decent salary, but at another time I could have qualified for food stamps. If my experience was at all representative, those who are graduating from college during the current recession may struggle financially, may experience feelings of personal failure, and may find it difficult to find a job related to their education or training.<\/p>\n

If there’s one thing we remember about the Great Recession in the years to come, I hope we remember that those who entered the job market in these years may need extra moral and financial support from all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2009 will probably be best remembered for the “Great Recession.” And for those who graduate from college this year, the recession may continue for many years. Lisa Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, believes that graduating from college in the middle of an economic downturn has serious long-term effects. In her paper, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6141,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions\/6141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}