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by ponector 22 days ago
But education is almost worthless now already. Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job and lucking real skills and experience. Ai is not a cause, it will simply speed up the degradation of the system.
2 comments

> Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job

The unemployment rate in the US is 3.7%. 38% of adults in the US have a college degree. 38% is hardly everyone, and if nobody can find a job, then the unemployment rate should be far higher than 3.7%, which is basically full employment.

I don't trust the unemployment numbers to be useful here because it's just measuring "do you have a job or not", not more important things like "does this job pay you enough to survive" or "do you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet". There are other metrics that look really bad. For example, from google: "The labor-force participation rate shrank to 61.5%, marking one of the lowest points in recent years as potential workers give up searching for employment." So, unemployment might be artificially low because a lot of people just.. gave up. I know a few people like that, and life on SSI checks is pretty grim! There's also this bit: "The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, sits at 8.2%"

Lets say you graduated with a STEM degree and now you're working at starbucks or walmart. Congrats you're employed! Is that sustainable or good? It's just not a useful metric. It's like the super rich pointing at the stock market and going "we're not in a recession, the number is going up!" and yet real buying power and wages are declining for everyone except the massively wealthy.

How about the relevant age group? Like 25-35 y.o.

For sure 20-y.o. adults have no degree and students are not count as unemployed.

20 year old students don't count as unemployed because they're not in the job market. Same reason you don't count retirees, children or the disabled.
Probably should just import more labor I guess