Unemployment among Recent College Graduates
To get some perspective on the labor market difficulties of
recent college graduates, we track the unemployment rate for
this group relative to three other groups: all workers (that is,
those who are sixteen to sixty-five), all college graduates, and
a comparable group of young workers, aged twenty-two to
twenty-seven, without college degrees (Chart 1). Our sample
period, extending from 1990 through the first part of 2013,
encompasses the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions as well as
the Great Recession of 2007-09. As Chart 1 makes clear, the
unemployment rates for all four groups followed common
trends during this period: the rates tended to move with the
business cycle, rising during the recessions and dropping
steadily during the subsequent recoveries. In addition, the
unemployment rate for all groups rose to particularly high
levels during and after the 2007-09 recession, and then began
to decline in 2010 as the labor market started to improve.