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New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

randalolson.com

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Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#211

Post by WalterBright »

danny_codes wrote: post #196
WalterBright wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost money on the houses I've bought. This is because I factor in the cost of the mortgage, property taxes, real estate commissions, maintenance, insurance, etc. Houses are lousy investments.

You might want to revisit your analysis under more standard accounting guidance.

I also neglected to mention the cost of the house sitting there for months vacant waiting for buyer. I'd always price mine slightly under the market to get them sold.

As for accounting guidance, just what are you driving at? Are those expenses I listed not real? They certainly took real money out of my account!

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#212

Post by labcomputer »

sarchertech wrote: post #201
sillysaurusx wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI’s coming for them. It’s impossible to predict what lawyering will look like in four years.

It’s impossible to predict what jobs in the trades would look like either if AI eats all the high salary white collar jobs.

Oh, but they already have that figured out.

You can't become a licensed electrician without doing x hours of apprenticeship under licensed electrician. And each licensed electrician doesn't need more than one or two helpers at a time, so...

Hollywood is the same. Want to join SAG? You need to get cast in 5 SAG productions. Oh, but SAG productions only cast SAG actors? Oh well...

Meanwhile, all us nerds were trying to teach anyone interested how to write software. Look where that got us.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#213

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #187
materielle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I don’t care about affording more things? And instead want to live in an ethical society that prioritizes stability and universal access to housing, healthcare, and education?

It's perfectly legal for you and like-minded people to set up a commune, and create the society you want. Or join an existing one.

BTW, the best I can figure is the average commune member quits after about 2 years, cured of the notion that communism is for them.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#214

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sarchertech wrote: post #199
weakened_malloc wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically the most simple (note; not easy) way to become a multi-millionaire. Do a trade in your 20s, leverage that into running your own trades business in your 30s, and have a >10m valuation business by your 40s. Really regret not doing that myself.

I know enough of trade business owners to know that a business worth $10 million is rare. Just using some back of the envelope math from numbers I found. On the high end a plumbing company is valued at 5x EBITA. A very very good plumbing company has a 20% net profit margin (and no debt, no corporate taxes or anything so that net income and EBITA are essentially the same), and a good plumbing company makes $350k in re…

I am not in the business of valuing small businesses, but one thing that seems off to me is that an EBITDA multiple is usually also dependent on the overall size of the business. That is, a business with only $1 million in EBITDA may only be worth 3-4x that, while a business with $10 million in EBITDA might be worth 8-10x EBITDA, on the theory that larger businesses will be more stable and less likely to have key person or large customer risk (some examples, https://raincatcher.com/ebitda-valuation-multiples-by-indust...)

That said, I agree with your overall assessment that $10 million single-owner plumbing businesses are rare, for the simple reason that $10 million single owner anything is rare. If it were not rare, by definition you'd have a lot more folks worth $10 million (and, in this case, a lot more people lining up to be plumbers), and then $10 million would probably not be worth very much.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#215

Post by t-3 »

khuey wrote: post #145
t-3 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our lying flat is opiods. Generating dark money and killing off the useless, isn't late-stage capitalist empire great?

Opioid overdose in America kills the uneducated, not the college graduates who failed to launch. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10559184/#aoi230067...

Lying flat isn't done only by college graduates, it's a broad youth movement. Uneducated people aren't happy to work soul-destroying jobs with long hours for little pay any more than college graduates, and have less hope for escaping that situation.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#216

Post by labcomputer »

hyperpape wrote: post #61

I wonder what the impact of the rising base rate of employees with college degrees is. In 1992, a fresh college graduate had better educational attainment than 42% of the labor force. In 2016 (latest date I found numbers for), that was down to 32%. https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/educational-attainment-of... That shifting distribution would somewhat reduce the advantage of a college degree against the average memb…

Ding ding ding!

This also neatly explains why Boomers were able to have a good life with just a high school diploma. Wikipedia has a good chart, but the short version is that having a high school diploma in 1965 meant you were better educated than 50% of the labor force.

PhDs are the new undergraduate degree.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#217

Post by epistasis »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #183
paulddraper wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing housing supply will absolutely decrease housing prices. That’s so obvious it’s nearly a truism. Rate of new houses is below the rate of new households, and it’s been that way for years.

"Increasing housing supply will absolutely decrease housing prices." True if it's the government building the houses, otherwise you hit a point where construction margins tank well before market saturation is reached. In practice new housing developments have a tendency to drag local real estate prices up (see also: gentrification).

> In practice new housing developments have a tendency to drag local real estate prices up (see also: gentrification).

This is absolutely false, not true, disproven, and made up.

Social housing builders are good for many reasons, 1) they provide competition to the public market, and when efficient don't need to return profit to shareholders so provide a very good competitor in places like Finland and Singapore, 2) social housing builders smooth out the business cycle, because new housing is needed just as much when at the downturn of the business cycle as at the top, so it greatly helps provide stable employment and a stable workforce for housing construction, greatly improving housing.

But the idea that new idea drives up housing prices in any way is, at best, a fiction. It's mostly a lie from landlords and homeowners to try to justify their continued extraction of profits from their idleness.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#218

Post by laughing_man »

epistasis wrote: post #58

The story here isn't college grads as much as young people in general. We are eating our young. We stopped building new housing, which turns housing into a transfer of wealth from those who don't have it (the young) to those who have been holding it (the not young). We have eliminated entry level positions, saddled college graduates with massive amounts of debt by defunding universities, and created great security fo…

Young people always had higher unemployment.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#219

Post by laughing_man »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #183
paulddraper wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing housing supply will absolutely decrease housing prices. That’s so obvious it’s nearly a truism. Rate of new houses is below the rate of new households, and it’s been that way for years.

"Increasing housing supply will absolutely decrease housing prices." True if it's the government building the houses, otherwise you hit a point where construction margins tank well before market saturation is reached. In practice new housing developments have a tendency to drag local real estate prices up (see also: gentrification).

That may be true in a very local area, but if you build something really nice in an area that wasn't very nice, the units that used to be mid are now near the bottom and have to lower their prices.

Re: New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker

#220

Post by epistasis »

WalterBright wrote: post #176
epistasis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building adequate housing also brings down the medium cost, by a lot. At worst, it prevents the median house from rising in price. Prices are set through a combination of supply-demand and cost of providing housing. Almost all increase in housing costs are coming from land price increase, due to land shortage from planning policies that limit land use density. Housing has been made into an investment first, and a hom…

I lost money on the houses I've bought. This is because I factor in the cost of the mortgage, property taxes, real estate commissions, maintenance, insurance, etc. Houses are lousy investments.

Are you factoring in the value of a living space in this calculation, the rent that the house generates?

When you live in your own house, it's called "implicit rent" but when you actually rent it out at market rates it's just called "rent."

There are a few housing markets where what you say will be true, but it's not true of most of the US by any means.

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