New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt:
This is not because all of the jobs being created in the wake of the recession are those that require college-degreed workers. In fact, around 44 percent of the job growth last month came in the retail and hospitality/leisure sectors, sectors traditionally open to those without a college education. What’s happening then is the college-degreed are trickling into lower-paying jobs that the non-degreed usually occupy, leaving the non-degreed with fewer places to turn. College education has been a good individual hedge against unemployment, but if the college-educated are merely displacing the non-degreed, pushing more people through college will do nothing to solve the aggregate jobs problem.