Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward

By Andrew Hanson, Carlo Salerno, Matt Sigelman, Mels de Zeeuw, and Stephen Moret.

Most students, families, policymakers, and educators look to higher education in large part as a bridge to economic opportunity and upward mobility. Today, however, some are calling into question whether higher education is delivering on that promise. While a college education is still worth it for the typical graduate, it is not a guarantee: college students face an increasing degree of risk. One of the biggest risks students face is that their degree will not provide access to a college-level job. Today, only about half of bachelor’s degree graduates secure employment in a college-level job within a year of graduation.

Using a combination of online career histories of tens of millions of graduates, as well as census microdata for millions of graduates, we developed a comprehensive picture of how college graduates fare in the job market over their first decade of post-college employment. We measured the prevalence and severity of underemployment and the cost in lost earnings, as well as analyzed how these are associated with a range of factors, including degree field, student characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity and gender), institutional characteristics (e.g., selectivity, concentration of low-income students, and type), and internship participation.