The new jobs report ticking the unemployment rate down to 8.5 percent is pretty good--but as Betsey Stevenson, the Labor Dept's former chief economist, pointed out, it continues a grim long-term trend: almost all the gains came in the college-educated sector of the economy. There was a gain of 301,000 jobs for peole with some college and above, a loss of 204,000 for those only with high school diplomas and below.
As we wrote last August: "Since the start of the recovery, the economy has created something like 1.5 million to 2 million net new jobs, and of these the vast majority have been 'high-skilled,'" says Susan Lund, head of research for the McKinsey Global Institute. The most recent population survey by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics offered this striking contrast: Since the recovery began producing jobs in January 2010, the United States has suffered a net loss of 500,000 jobs among people with high school diplomas or less, but a net gain of 1.2 million jobs for college grads. "During the entire recession, the unemployment rate for college graduates never exceeded 5 percent, while the unemployment rate for people without a high school degree soared to 15 percent," Lund says. Of the 9.2 percent of Americans who are currently unemployed, 78 percent did not finish high school.
The skills mismatch continues to weigh down the economy, as does the increasing number of "Left-Behinds." So why aren't we talking about a job education and training budget that remains one of the most paltry in the world? Total federal spending for job training adds up to a paltry $15 billion annually--about what it was in 2002, adjusting for inflation, according to Georgetown University professor Harry Holzer. "That's one-tenth of 1 percent of the [gross domestic product]," he says. "That's way less than virtually any country spends on this stuff."
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