Paul TostoMPR News has written a ton during the Great Recession and not-so-Great Recovery about the plight of new college graduates. We regularly reported the stories young adults told us of their struggles to find work in Minnesota coming out of college the past few years.
New data analyzed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis give us a sense of just how bad it’s been.
Fed writer Ron Wirtz examined survey data from the Minnesota State Universities and Colleges system. MnSCU surveys its graduates every year to see if they are gainfully employed during the subsequent year in a job related to the program or major they studied in school.
“Survey data across these institutions show that graduates were having a tougher time landing a job in their field of study,” Wirtz wrote.
The Fed’s key chart:
As Wirtz notes, the data come with caveats: It’s self reported. The averages mask big differences among schools. There’s no distinction between full- and part-time. And the data don’t reflect the recently improving jobless picture in Minnesota.
Still, the trends show the reversal of fortune for recession-era graduates compared to those who earned degrees a couple of years earlier. Those problems will continue to surface in the form of greater student loan defaults even as the economy slowly improves.
— Paul Tosto