Post-Secondary Graduates: Holding Their Own in Terms of Employment Rates and Earnings Patterns

It seems to have become a received fact that Generation X-ers have been facing tough times and have consequently sunk into a multifaceted collective malaise: cultural, moral, political, and – especially – economic. On the surface, the evidence seems incontrovertible, with various researchers reporting a decline in the fortunes of younger Canadian workers, accompanied by explanations of how this has come to be.1 These studies have, however, mostly been restricted to the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) databases. One problem with this concentration of the empirical evidence is there has been less cross-verification of the patterns than would be desirable. Second, because the SCF is a general purpose labour market survey, the potential for doing extended analysis at the sub-group level (e.g., by specific cohort, level of education, sex, etc.) is limited, due to the associated small sample sizes. Third, again as a result of the omnibus nature of the SCF databases, the variables available reflect no predilection for younger workers in general, nor those going through the school-to-work transition in particular, thus limiting the scope of any analysis of this special stage of individuals’ working lives. Fourth, the cross-sectional nature of the SCF data precludes any sort of explicitly dynamic analysis, such as how employment status or earnings levels evolve over the early years in the labour market for given individuals.2 Finally, the SCF data pose problems for comparisons over time based on the specific level of education thanks to changes in the definition of the educational categories used in the survey in 1989.3