The Homa Files

Interesting tidbit in a Business Week article What’s Wrong With the U.S. Job Market?

Punch line: the “cognitive content” of tasks performed by employed college graduates peaked in 2000, has dropped fairly steadily since, and is approach all-time lows.

Here’s more …

A new study by three Canadian economists says that today’s jobs don’t require more smarts than jobs of the recent past.

The researchers found that the average “cognitive content” of tasks performed by employed college graduates of all ages peaked in 2000 and has dropped fairly steadily since.

The authors agree that college grads are more likely to be employed than high school grads and dropouts.

But they say that’s partly because the college grads are grabbing jobs they’re overqualified for, bumping the less educated down the job ladder or off of it entirely.

If this research stands up, a lot of economists and policymakers will be forced to rethink their assumptions about the role of education in fixing unemployment.

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This entry was posted on May 14, 2013 at 6:59 am and is filed under College, Education - Academics, Jobs - Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.