We are all aware that having a college degree provides better jobs with better wages, but recent statistics show that people with college degrees also have higher chances of keeping their job during tougher times.
According to the article, the unemployment rate for workers 25-and-older with a bachelor's degree or higher was 4.6% in August, compared with 10.3% for those with just high-school diploma. The article also states that laid-off college graduates find work faster than those without a college degree, as the median unemployment time as of August for college graduates was 18.4 weeks compared to 27.5 weeks for high-school graduates.
We learned in class how increase in Human Capital (H) increases Marginal Productivity of Labor (MPL), and that in return increases the average wage of the unskilled (L). Interestingly, the article also states that although a college grad on average earns 64% more than a high-school grad, the wage premium hasn't been climbing much since 2001. Given that the number of college graduates (Human Capital) has skyrocketed in the last decade, and the statistic provided above, we can infer that the increase in Human Capital actually increases the wage of the Labor (unskilled).
this is not really surprising as skilled workers are always in higher demand as they are harder to replace. Unskilled workers can be easily replaced as there training period is smaller than that of a skilled worker.
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