When Graduate Jobs in America Involve a Broom, a Bartender's License and an Apron

There's something about America that feels a lot like India these days. In India, you're often likely to find that in the cities, every low-paid clerk at the grocery store, the cab drivers, the office gophers and construction workers, hold graduate and postgraduate degrees. Back in America today, you're likely to find lots of similar stories. You'll find someone with an MA in classical languages stocking shelves at Target; you'll find that your bartender has a degree in psychology; and you'll find that that bright political science from down the street works a phone for a little money. These are the new graduate jobs. These are the jobs that young people take out student loans that they pay back for the rest of their lives for.

When you hear that the recession is over and that the economy is back on track, don't believe it. One of the worst things the recession has done has been to take hope away from today's generation. And education was always supposed to be one's ticket to a better life. Today, with people with graduate school under their belt flipping burgers and scooping french fries at McDonald's, one wonders what people with only high school or a year of college are doing.

The really lucky ones do find suitable graduate jobs; but they find that those jobs pay sharply lower salaries then they would have three years ago, before the recession. On average, the starting salary of a young person last year with a four-year degree under his belt, was $27,000. That's $3000 less than what it used to be before the recession. And this is a period of time that prices have risen quite spectacularly. So if you think about it, that's actually a $5,000 salary cut when you adjust for inflation.

When you hear that unemployment around the country is at 9% or 10%, does that sound truly alarming to you? How does 45% sound? That's the unemployment figure among new graduates from last year. It used to be before the recession, that only 10% of those who graduated with a four-year degree had trouble finding a job right away.

Of course, not all graduate degrees are the same. When it comes to finding graduate jobs - or jobs that actually require a graduate degree (unlike the aforementioned jobs tending bar or stocking shelves at Target), young people who have degrees in teaching or engineering are more likely to find a job today. Young people who have a degree in political science or the classical languages are the least likely to find graduate jobs.

People who suffer this way react often by resorting to further education with a vengeance. They go back to school trying to get a PhD or something. What could they do? It's their only shot.