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Remember that time your parents convinced 18-year-old you that you should take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans to get a college education? Remember when they said it was the best path to take in order to ensure you’d get a job out of school on your way to a successful career? Based on recent evidence, it appears they might have just been having a goof.
At some point, society decided it would be a good idea to make teenagers pick a topic they might come to hate after taking half of the prerequisites required for their major, but even if you graduate with a degree in your field of choice, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to land a job in a world that’s skeptical of liberal arts majors and millennials in general.
An English major working as a barista has become the cliché of choice, but every year, people are forced to take jobs they’re overqualified for in order to meet ends meet. Unfortunately, a recent study has shown that such a decision can be costly— to the tune of $10,000 a year for the rest of your life.
According to Time, the concisely-named Strada Institute for the Future of Work and Burning Glass Technologies dug into the data using 4 million résumés to track the career paths of college graduates. The result proved if you’re currently working in a job below your pay grade, the price can add up over the years.
Here are the biggest takeaways according to researcher Michelle Weise:
“We tend to rationalize this experience as a rite of passage in moving towards a career. But underemployment is not at all a short-term problem. Once you start out behind you stay behind.”
The trap of underemployment has serious financial implications: Underemployed graduates earn about $10,000 less per year than those in jobs that match their credentials.
To this I say:
GIFER
When Charlie Kelly is the voice of reason, you know something has gone terribly wrong.