TY - JOUR AU - Abel, Jaison R AU - Deitz, Richard TI - Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates Following the Great Recession JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 22654 PY - 2016 Y2 - September 2016 DO - 10.3386/w22654 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22654 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22654.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jaison R. Abel Research and Statistics Group Federal Reserve Bank of New York 33 Liberty Street New York, NY 10045 Tel: 716-849-5010 Fax: 716-849-5021 E-Mail: jaison.abel@ny.frb.org Richard Deitz Research and Statistics Group Federal Reserve Bank of New York 33 Liberty Street New York, NY 10045 E-Mail: richard.deitz@ny.frb.org M1 - published as Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz. "Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates following the Great Recession," in Charles R. Hulten and Valerie A. Ramey, editors, "Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth" University of Chicago Press (2019) M3 - presented at "CRIW Conference", October 16-17, 2015 AB - Though labor market conditions steadily improved following the Great Recession, underemployment among recent college graduates continued to climb, reaching highs not seen since the early 1990s. In this paper, we take a closer look at the jobs held by underemployed college graduates in the early stages of their careers during the first few years after the Great Recession. Contrary to popular perception, we show that relatively few recent graduates were working in low-skilled service jobs, and that many of the underemployed worked in fairly well paid non-college jobs requiring some degree of knowledge and skill. We also find that the likelihood of being underemployed was lower for those with more quantitatively oriented and occupation-specific majors than it was for those with degrees in general fields. Moreover, our analysis suggests that underemployment is a temporary phase for many recent college graduates as they transition to better jobs after spending some time in the labor market, particularly those who start their careers in low-skilled service jobs. ER -