PenPenWrites

Consider this an addendum to my last post about the frustrations parents of grown children feel when their newly minted college grads can't land a job– any job, no less one for which those college years prepared them. The generation has won such unattractive terms as The Lazy Generation and Generation of Slackers. And why not: there they sit, living at home with mom and dad and not seeming to lift a finger to get a job. Or so it seems.

But not to economists, who have a little more sympathy for the crowds of kids getting out of college but not into the kind of job they would ordinarily merit.

Here's the New York Times' Charlotte Rampell taking note of the job market for recent college grads, based on data from the labor economist Andrew Sum. From October 2010 through March 2011, 74.4 percent of college graduates under age 25 had jobs but only 45.9 percent of them had jobs that actually required a college degree. The rest of this group were bar tending or waiting on tables, looking for work, or out of the labor force altogether–perhaps because they were back in school.

Sound like anything that's happening around your once-empty nest? Rampell goes on to compare today's numbers to those from a decade ago. It's quite a shocker.

Andrew Sum; Bureau of Labor Statistics

Source: Andrew Sum; Bureau of Labor Statistics Numbers for 2010 refer to January through October of that year.