Have Recent College Graduates Experienced Worsening Wage and Job Distributions?

This article examines whether recent college graduates have fared as well as their predecessors. We examine changes in both the wage and occupational distributions. Specifically, we explore the claim that college educated workers are increasingly likely to be in “non-college” occupations. The latter are defined using standard economic concepts rather than the subjective groupings of occupations used in previous studies. We show that changes in the wage distribution and changes in the proportion of college-educated workers in “non-college” jobs reflect continued improvements through the mid-1980s, but a deterioration in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 1 Gottschalk is Professor of Economics and Hansen is a graduate student at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167. This research was supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.