BUSINESS
284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012. The Wall Street Journal this week reported on the troubling trend of college graduates getting stuck in low-skilled jobs, a problem that new research suggests may endure even after the economy improves. As the story noted, college graduates tend to earn more than their less-educated coworkers, even within the same field. But that isn’t true for everyone: According to the Labor Department , there were 284,000 graduates—those with at least a bachelor’s degree—working minimum-wage jobs in 2012, including 37,000 holders of advanced degrees. That’s down from a peak of 327,000 in 2010, but double the number in 2007 and up 70% from a decade earlier. While the raw number of college grads stuck in minimum-wage jobs remains elevated, their share of such jobs is at more or less its 10-year average.
Real Time Economics