Students in the class of 2020 had to deal with a lot of changes during their last year because of the plague. Students who were finishing school during the COVID-19 pandemic finished and then had to deal with a tough job market.
After four years, just over sixty percent of grads are either working or going to school to learn more. So, 10% of those graduates, or 10% of the students, were “idling,” which meant they weren’t going back to school and didn’t have a job.
Hannes Schwandt, an associate professor of social policy and human development at Northwestern University, said, “The economy at the time you enter the job market is very important.”
He said, “In general, when recessions happen and the economy gets worse, companies stop hiring before they start firing; they hire fewer people.” “That means that people who are just starting to look for work are affected almost more than people who are already working.”
Research shows that students might have a hard time making up, even though there was a small recession after the pandemic. In the same way, this is like the graduates during the Great Recession. Even though the recession after the pandemic wasn’t as bad as the Great Recession, students are still expected to take a big hit to their income and start over in a successful job after the recession.
They wrote, “Our results suggest that for a moderate recession that raises unemployment rates by three points, the loss on accumulated earnings is likely to be around 60% of a year’s worth of earnings.”
