It has taken 10 years, but the job market for young college graduates has largely recovered to where it was in 2007, before the Great Recession. The recent unemployment rate for college graduates ages 21 to 24 was 5.6 percent, basically the same as in 2007. The wages of young college graduates have also recovered, to $19.18 an hour.
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The Class of 2017 — both college and high school graduates — is coming of age in an economy that is still enfeebled by the serial busts of this century and the failure of government to pick up the slack with more robust policies. These young people deserve better. They deserve a legal and regulatory system that safeguards against boom-and-bust cycles. They deserve federal investment in infrastructure, clean energy and scientific research that creates jobs and lays the foundation for prosperity. They deserve increased resources for public-sector jobs that require college degrees, notably teaching. They deserve a tax system that collects enough revenue to ensure health care, child care and secure retirement.
Will they get it?
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