"Nearly half of the college graduates in the class of 2010 are working in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree and 38 percent have jobs that don’t even require a high school diploma, according to a January report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. The report called into question whether too much public money is being spent on providing students with degrees that make them overqualified for the only jobs that are available."
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284,000 College Graduates Had Minimum-Wage Jobs Last Year (via robot-heart-politics)
Is it a commentary on the lack of value in higher education? Or is it about the job market not taking advantage of the talent surplus in the labor pool? Are there corporate, government, or entrepreneurial opportunities being missed because job creators are not taking risks?
(via robot-heart-politics)
"Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development impacts as a dollar spent on an equivalent non-local business."
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Forbes piece on the amazing power of spending locally. (via poptech)
jayparkinsonmd:
It’s not only healthy for you to eat fresh and local food, it’s healthy for your neighborhood’s economy.
(via jayparkinsonmd)
"Inequality is growing in the United States, and social mobility is slowing. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 62 percent of Americans raised in the top one-fifth of the income scale stay in the top two-fifths; 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. Education, long praised as the great equalizer, no longer seems to be performing as advertised. A study by Stanford University shows that the gap in standardized-test scores between low-income and high-income students has widened about 40 percent since the 1960s—now double that between black and white students. A study from the University of Michigan found that the disparity in college-completion rates between rich and poor students has grown by about 50 percent since the 1980s."
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Has Higher Education Become an Engine of Inequality? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via infoneer-pulse)
An interesting, and challenging question…
(via infoneer-pulse)
"Nothing can take the sting out of the economic crisis like watching millionaires provide each other with golden statues."
— Billy Crystal, crystallizing the Oscars in one sentence.
"
In a study released Wednesday, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California reports that the proportion of households it defines as the middle class — those with annual incomes between $44,000 and $155,000 — has dropped below half, to 49.7 percent.
Households below that level account for 36.6 percent of Californians, and those above account for 13.7 percent.
The percentage of Californians in the middle class is the lowest in at least 30 years, the report says, and has consistently fallen since its peak of 60 percent in 1980.
"
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Fewer than half of Californians can now be called ‘middle class’ » Ventura County Star (via shorterexcerpts)
Wow.
(via shorterexcerpts)
![theatlantic:
Adulthood, Delayed: What Has the Recession Done to Millennials?
Generations are social constructs. There is no chemical or biological difference between Gen-Xers and Millennials, but we talk about them as if they were different species. That Gen-Xers grew up “independent” and Millennials grew up “entitled” aren’t anthropological observations. Rather, they’re marginally useful stereotypes. If it’s true that members of a certain age group have commonalities that they don’t fully share with older or younger groups, this isn’t the result of generational determinism. It’s just circumstance.
The circumstances surrounding the Millennial generation are particularly strange. Many came of age in the longest economic expansion of the 20th century and graduated into the worst recession since the 1930s. The abrupt contraction of opportunity has left a mark. Unemployment among 18- to 24-year-olds was 16% in 2011, twice as high as the national average. Median earnings fell more for the young than any other cohort, and college debt, most of which is held by 20-somethings, is at an all-time high.
With education comes opportunity. That’s the deal, as this generation understood it. Now, they’re the highest-educated generation in American history, and they’ve graduated into … this.
When adults wonder what’s the matter with the Millennial generation that has increasingly chosen to live with their parents and put off marriage and homeownership, the first thing to say is that they’re using the word “chosen” wrong. Nobody chose this. The economy chose for them.
Read more. [Image: Scarleth White/Flickr]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lze4daMFNq1qcokc4o1_500.png)
