PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jesse Rothstein
TI  - The Lost Generation? Labor Market Outcomes for Post Great Recession Entrants
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.58.5.0920-11206R1
DP  - 2021 Jun 09
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 0920-11206R1
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/06/02/jhr.58.5.0920-11206R1.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/06/02/jhr.58.5.0920-11206R1.full
AB  - I study cohort patterns in the labor market outcomes of recent college graduates, examining changes surrounding the Great Recession. Recession entrants have lower wages and employment than those of earlier cohorts; more recent cohorts’ employment is even lower, but the newest entrants’ wages have risen. I relate these changes to “scarring” effects of initial conditions. I demonstrate that adverse early conditions permanently reduce new entrants’ employment probabilities. I also replicate earlier results of medium-term scarring effects on wages that fade out by the early 30s. But scarring cannot account for the employment collapse for recent cohorts. There was a dramatic negative structural break in college graduates’ employment rates, beginning around the 2005 entry cohort, that shows no sign of abating.