What College Seniors Should Know About Jobs

, Malcolm A. Kline, 1 Comment

They are unlikely to find one. “Wise men” will tell them this is a “weak recovery” and “the financial crisis ended years ago.”

During the 1930s, as many as 15 million were out of work, according to the Obama Administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Currently, “Combining those not in the labor force who are of working age and all those unemployed shows 55.4 million working-age, native-born Americans without jobs in the first quarter of 2016, compared to 41.1 million in the same quarter of 2000,” according to Dr. Steven Camorata of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). If the former period was a “Great Depression,” surely, at least, this is an even greater one.

We have noted that both Conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan and Liberal Democrat President Bill Clinton could, and did, legitimately, brag about record levels of job growth. Both occurred for the same reason: New jobs come from new businesses.

Therein, lay the bad news, that isn’t getting any better: In the past 16 years, the BLS reports, the new business survival rate has dropped from 48 percent to 20 percent.

Even if you are lucky enough to get a job, with these odds stacked against you, the odds are that you will have little resembling disposable income. The U. S. Census bureau reported in 2014 that “In 2013, real median household income was 8.0 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.”

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