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For all their difficulties, the college-educated are still better off than non-college youths. Last year the average unemployment rate for Americans under 24 who had at least four years of college was 8.3%, but for people in the same age group with only a high school diploma it was 19.9%. Despite the eagerness of businessmen to hire college-educated blacks, the average unemployment rate among black teen-agers—who are generally less schooled and skilled than white youths—was a horrifying 42.8%.
Sooner or later, the best-educated young Americans find jobs, if only ones for which they are over qualified, and during a lifetime they will still make much more money than youths with less education. In the process, however, the college-educated underemployed aggravate a social problem even more disruptive than their own: the travail of the non-college youths for whom there are no jobs at all.