If this doesn't shake you you're unshakable...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

What is the current unemployment rate among college graduates?

Highlight below for Answer:

> > > Roughly 3% vs 15% for everybody else < < <


No wonder folks get so edgy about "class war" talk!

Full employment for some, depression level unemployment for others.

(Similar to our usual racial employment splits.)

[tabatha]

1. Yep, because the skilled jobs have been outsourced.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

9. Uhm, exactly the opposite, actually.

College degree = skilled jobs.

No college degree = manufacturing job = outsourced to someone that can easily do it without training.

[Deja Q]

18. LOL. Look at the result:

* lead, melamine, antifreeze, toxic smells
* simple things not being put in proper place (off by a millimeter and cannot be assembled) or backwards
* calling back several times because the claim it would be done did NOT get done

How much detail do you want?

Indeed, how much fraud is going on overseas? And here too.

[Ikonoklast]

24. Really?

Ever see an untrained unskilled individual operate a CNC milling machine?

If you think blue-collar = unskilled you are sadly mistaken.

[Deja Q]

25. Well said.

On the surface, it may or may not be simple. But there ARE procedures, and some people don't have the acuity for precision work like that, with such work not being made to be done by a machine yet.

It is indeed skilled labor. And the more the human factor (love, detail, caring) that is taken out of a product, the more and more sloppy (and/or dangerous) it becomes.

[Ikonoklast]

28. I have a old friend that is a skilled toolmaker.

He is responsible for designing and fabricating precision tooling for the aerospace industry. He apprenticed for four years, and had an additional two years supervised on the job training.

He is responsible for fabrication worth millions of dollars.

He also holds patents for improvements in tooling design.

He has a high-school diploma.

Unskilled my ass.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

34. No, I don't think blue collar = unskilled

But whereas they're offering college degrees for welding these days because the machinery is so technically advanced, blue collar isn't even what it used to be. There are no assembly lines in this country made for people without SOME kind of postsecondary training. You cannot leave high school and expect to get an $10-15/hour job anymore. It's just not going to happen.

[Still Sensible]

31. Nicholas is Correct!

And actually, I am kind of surprised the number for college grads is so low. I know a lot of people have been laid off and based on the news stories in the last month, a lot of those layoffs have been management, which is typically college grads. How solid are the figures cited?

[baldguy]

39. Show me a university that offers a Masters' Degree in Masonry.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

40. A college degree does not have to be a masters.

It's intellectually dishonest for you to imply that there is.

[baldguy]

41. So, you can't.

Right?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

42. Of course not.

You can, however, receive an associates degree in masonry from many places. Which, so far as I know, still qualifies as a college degree.

[Occam Bandage]

12. No, the unskilled jobs are outsourced. nt

[KakistocracyHater]

33. plus the rocket scientists in the 90s

the truth hurts!:+

[endarkenment]

college grads and non college grads are in the same class

we are all peasants. The elites like to divide us into groups and have us fight each other for their amusement.

[ulysses]

2. the costs of free trade.

Hey, what happened to that Clinton-era retraining-for-the-information-age stuff?

[IntravenousDemilo]

14. What happened was the Bush era. n/m

[ulysses]

15. that and the dotcom bust. n/t

[scheming daemons]

3. All the more reason to make sure your kids get an education....

..of course, the cost of which is going up at 3 times the inflation rate.

[damntexdem]

5. That's where the class war comes in: the soaring costs of a college education.

A college degree is becoming a harder goal for those who aren't rich.

[IntravenousDemilo]

17. Post-secondary education should be free of charge, just like high school.

But there should be extremely strict admission criteria for universities, starting with ability to express oneself properly and elegantly in writing. Not everyone is intellectually suited for academic pursuits, and those not suited can be streamed to community colleges. And here's the kicker: I also believe that community colleges and trade schools should be accorded the same status in society that universities enjoy. And they should be free, too.

[Deja Q]

20. Taxpayer funded. And as a result of the public education system, it needs reform.

It ALL needs reform.

[IntravenousDemilo]

26. Well, yes, the taxpayer is pretty well always the source of the money. That's just how it is.

Any politician who claims that it can be otherwise is lying. Just once, when someone asks a candidate how he proposes to pay for the things his party has promised, I'd like the candidate to say, "Well, idiot, how do you think we're going to finance them? Where has the money always come from to build roads and other infrastructure? Have you been living under a rock? Gimme a break!"

[justinaforjustice]

32. Other Countries Care About Their People.

Here in Venezuela where I am teaching, public education is free to the post-doctoral level and all university students receive a stipend to assist with living expenses. There is government provided free medical care, subsidized restaurants where a 3 course meal can be had for $1.00 and subsidized supermarkets available to all. Low cost, sometimes free, loans are available to purchase housing and to start up businesses and cooperative enterprises. These are the programs that the Hugo Chavez government has put in place since he was first elected in 1998.

The U.S State Department and the American media tries to demonize Chavez, calling him a "strong man" and "authoritarian", not because it is true (which it is not, he and his government have won 12 internationally monitored, honest elections sine 1998), but because he is a successful socialist leader. The last thing our ruling class wants is for the American people to realize how badly they are being exploited by the wealthy and to demand a society which makes the quality of life for every citizen a priority.

[hatrack]

27. It gets worse - median income all bachelor's degree holders down 4.6% 2001 - 2006

And tuition rates have risen by 439% since 1982, though I rather suspect that "elite" school tuition has tended to skew this to the updside.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/20/pf/college/college_price.moneymag/index.htm

[peace13]

4. Yet this summer FOX News was all a twitter about how college education was no longer necessary

to get a good job. Go figure. They try to comfort those who have had to call there children home because the tuition has dried up.

[Deja Q]

22. Bill Gates was a college dropout.

Find something, exploit it until its butt bleeds to death, and roll in the riches. :D

[endarkenment]

36. Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout with a huge trust fund.

Bill Gates Sr. was and is a wealthy man. Bill Gates Jr. was in the right place at the right time with the right connections and the rest is history. That is one awful example of why we should put up with bullshit about how the increasing unaffordability of higher education is just fine and dandy. Horatio Alger bullshit. Rightwing screed.

[conscious evolution]

6. Too many college grads are

flipping hamburgers,thats why the difference.

[uponit7771]

8. The Bush admin renamed them "manufacturing" jobs because they "Build" food....

...yeap, those bastards are really really really stupid

[uponit7771]

7. Yeap, back in the day you could get a family wage job out of high school, that's no more...

...and I have to explain to me niece & nephew that McDonalds isn't going to pay your bills or even get close to the mean average income of Kansas City or DFW

[leftstreet]

10. Meh. Both are still forced to sell their labor to the Predator Class

The only slight difference is the type and amount of debt accumulated in order to have the privilege to sell oneself.

[Occam Bandage]

11. Unsurprising. As the American economy moves towards an information model,

and as the developing world begins pumping millions upon millions of unskilled laborers into the global market, uneducated workers in America are obviously going to be at a massive disadvantage.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

16. Here's a question...

I don't think college really prepares most people for their jobs. Engineers and doctors and such, sure, but most office jobs can be done by any literate person with manners who isn't a complete dope.

I think the real problem revealed is that anyone hiring for a white collar job will take a college grad over a non-grad even if 90% of the job is picking up the bosses laundry.

A college degree is equivalent to a HS diploma 40 years ago. Note that the 3% (3.2% I think I heard) includes all the people who staggered through an awful college without cracking a book and are as dumb as dirt. What those people (we all know some) tend to have in common is that they did not put themselves through school.

Which leads to this question:

How much of the disparity in employment disappears when you adjust for parental income?

I'm guessing a lot.

[Deja Q]

19. The Education Scam (everybody may have bachelors degrees yet poverty won't end anyway)

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11181-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=179848&start=0

[uponit7771]

13. Community college then state colleges will be the beneficiaries of high cost of college

[Tesha]

21. Quite frankly, for IT professionals, 3% sounds VERY, VERY bogus.

Far too many of my friends (and relatives!) are now unemployed or
have recently been unemployed for the rate among the IT/Software
trades to only be 3%; we're in what's probably at least the tenth year
of massive outsourcing of our jobs to India, China, Costa Rica, and
other places and the "insourcing" of H1-B visa temporary immigrants.

Or maybe 3% is true if you discount everyone who's now underemployed
or has sought and/or been forced to work outside the trade.

Tesha

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. apples and apples. the 15% may also be low.

[Tesha]

35. Oh, quite likely as well! (NT)

[treestar]

38. How can that be? Everything is computerized

Those of us in other fields now spend most of our time on the process and not the substance. It's all this is being computerized and that is being computerized. This or that is now done online. You can't spend a day just working on your stuff, you're always adjusting to the new technology and the new computer program.

Take lawyers.

We used to take our complaints to the courthouse to file them. Now we have to file them all online and each and every court seems to have a different system we have to get used to and learn. And there are people to call when it goes wrong and doesn't work (and the stress is incredible, since there is a deadline. ) And those people are in the US and are American. And we get charged more for it.

Court reporters now computerize their output. They used to use old fashioned tapes. And their transcripts therefore cost more than they used to.

Every legal research product is now online or on disc. We have online seminars. All costing more than they did the old fashioned way.

Everything is billed through computers.

And I am sure it is the same in the medical profession. The cost of a mammogram went way up - why? Because now they have a digital camera for it. All computerized.

Can there be that many educated Indians (and others)? Are they doing all this work?

Every IT worker I know is doing really well. Even if you eliminated all H-1bs how much would their salaries be improved on? Making 80K rather than 70K? Is that what all this fuss is about?

Maybe there is room for everybody in this field that is taking over Earth! You can't turn around but that whatever you previously did without computers now has to be done with them.

I check out library books by computer now! Kids play games on computers now, rather than playing with toys. We watch TV on computers. What about that crap about it all going digital and things becoming obsolete?

And how many times have we been churned with Windows 3.4, 95, 98, XP, Vista - we have to get used to a new system every couple of years. Are the Indians designing and selling all of this?

[Tommy_J]

29. What is the source for those unemployment numbers?

[Rocknrule]

30. It's also scary that only 1/4 of Americans go to college

or so I've heard

[Aloha Spirit]

37. This data is false.