Yet another resume arrived in my email box this week, from a young man who graduated with a BA in economics and a minor in math last May. Anthony Lewis, a graduate of York College of Pennsylvania, with summer job experience at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, can’t find a job, so he is looking for an unpaid internship.
Anthony isn’t alone. The unemployment rate in 2010 for newly graduated men and women age 20 to 24 with bachelor’s degrees was 9.2 percent, far higher than the 5.1 percent rate young adults experienced in 2005, according to unpublished Labor Department data.
This is Generation O: the age cohort that contributed, registered, volunteered and voted for Barack Obama with greater intensity than we have seen since at least the 1960 presidential election.
Since then, the effect of President Obama’s failed economic policies has fallen most disproportionately on them. Unemployment rates among Generation O suggest large and lasting implications for them and for society.
University of Toronto economics professor Philip Oreopoulos found that graduating in a recession leads to earnings losses that last for a decade. Losses are greater for new than for existing workers, who might see smaller raises, but who have jobs.
Young men have been particularly adversely affected, with an unemployment rate of 11 percent, compared with 7.9 percent for women. Five years ago male graduates had an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent, and the rate for females was 4.5 percent.
Men tend to major in science, technology, engineering, math and business, fields that should be in demand. But women may be finding jobs in the service sector, particularly education and health care, which has seen steady growth during the recession.
White males with bachelor’s degrees have not been insulated from economic trends. Their unemployment rates have more than doubled over the past five years, from 5.2 percent in 2005 to 13.1 percent in 2010.
Rates for white female grads have soared, from 4.1 percent in 2005 to 12.3 in 2010.
Black male BAs have fared even worse, with unemployment rates tripling from 6.5 percent in 2005 to 24 percent in 2010. This means that nearly one quarter of the black males who made it through a four-year degree program were unemployed.
Politicians and educators tell minority students that educational attainment is the path out of poverty, but this is not persuasive if 24 percent of our black male graduates are unemployed.
Plus, large increases in college tuition in recent decades mean that Generation O is graduating with a lot of debt. That’s one reason why rates of recent graduates living at home with either a parent or grandparent have increased.
In 2005, the share of 20- to 24-year-olds who had at least a bachelor’s degree but were living at home was 36 percent, and it reached 43 percent in 2011.
It used to be that if you graduated from college with a degree, you were assured of a job. For many in Generation O, this is no longer true.
Obama has promoted an Old Economy model that favors big corporations, labor unions and more government. But Generation O thrives best in a New Economy model that favors nimble startups, hard-charging union-free workplaces and minimal government interference.
Young people voted for Obama believing him to be a new kind of leader, but he has delivered them a dysfunctional Old Economy with European-style mandates.
Generation O put Obama in the White House, but he has repaid them by consigning them to their parents’ house. Clearly, only one side made out well on that deal.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth ([email protected]), former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
