Today I discovered that we seem to have lost nearly 400,000 (yes four hundred thousand) graduates from the US. This is based on employment status of civilian population 25 years and older. See the section “Bachelor’s degree and higher” – Civilian Labor Force.
Over the past four days there has been a lot of chatter in the news and economics media about the recent employment report. Every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an Employment Situation report. See Jan 2016 repot here. Over the many years, I always listened to the commentary about the same from many folks. I was always impressed with the amazing array of statistics and numbers quoted, thanks to the venerable employment report. This month I decided to check it out.
Unlike in the past, something special happened last month to yours truly. After twenty-one years of gainful employment and learning, I had resigned from a big company (Thank you Microsoft). I am also a graduate as per Labor Statistics. And furthermore, I had not started a new employment yet. Truly this is a special situation! I know that all the past organizations I was associated with have declared that I am out of employment: Premera sent me notice that I have to accept new health care card … and I am singing up with Obamacare at Washington Health Care Finder, 401K status likely changing as per the Fidelity Representative, etc. Of course I also understand that I am a tiny spec in this big employment market. Nonetheless the extra time afforded me an opportunity to learn more.
Overall I am impressed about the consistent reporting of data from BLS.gov. It is a short and sweet report; there are a lot of talk about revisions which makes it a bit challenging to decipher fullness clearly. It is great to see rich and diverse data collected, cleansed of noise, analyzed, and made available as a report. The ancillary/summary statistics are very useful. Still I am trying to figure out why they repeatedly call it as non-farm payroll, history I suppose. Next month’s report is due on March 4th at 8:30AM; I hope to read it again.
Back to the original question: What happened to the 400,000 missing graduates. First when I saw this number, especially the difference between Dec 2015 and Jan 2016 to be 398,000 (about 400,000), I was surprised. Now I can think of a few reasons for this situation.
- (plausible) There are annual revision of statistics resulting in one-time reduction for Jan 2016. I did not observe significant reduction between Dec 2014 and Jan 2015 (see Jan 2015 here)
- (not plausible)2016 has started a large migration of folks outside US.
- (plausible) More than expected number of deaths amongst graduates recorded resulting in significant reduction of graduates.
- (not plausible)Graduates returned back their degrees
- (plausible) More graduate enrolled in non-civilian services
- (plausible) I am looking at the wrong data.
- (plausible) more revisions to data are coming.
I do not know the reason. Need to find out more.
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