The slow pace of the recovery has meant that eight classes of students have graduated into an acutely weak labor market and have had to compete with more-experienced workers for a limited number of job opportunities. This is on top of the fact that graduates since 2000 have confronted suboptimal labor market conditions, resulting in stagnant wages and limited job opportunities.
While sustained but slow improvements in economic conditions in recent years have brightened young graduates’ job prospects, the labor market is still far from recovered from the Great Recession-and is even further from the full employment economy of 2000.
This paper focuses on recent high school (age 17-20) and college graduates (age 21-24) who are not enrolled in further schooling. We analyze their employment, enrollment, and wage trends in order to glean the Class of 2016’s economic prospects as they start their careers.
Due to the progression of the economic recovery and a substantial improvement in the unemployment rate, members of the Class of 2016 currently have better job prospects than the classes of 2009-2015. However, the Class of 2016 still faces real economic challenges, as evidenced by elevated levels of unemployment and underemployment, and a large share of graduates who still remain “idled” by the economy. In addition, wages of young high school and college graduates have failed to reach their prerecession levels, and have in fact stagnated or declined for almost every group since 2000.
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