Good Jobs Are Out of Reach for Many 20-Somethings in the US

By Martha Ross and Anthony P. Carnevale

Young people enter the labor market with lower odds for decent-paying employment, particularly for those already socioeconomically disadvantaged or without higher education.

Brookings Metro and Child Trends’ research finds that nearly 60% of adults who were socioeconomically disadvantaged in their teens continue to struggle economically at age 30 — facing low earnings, high poverty rates, and many barriers to employment. Similarly, Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce research shows that only young adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher are consistently more likely to have a good job than the previous generation, while the majority of workers with a high school diploma or less do not attain a good job by age 35.*

What are the patterns of youth career pathways, and how can we create the conditions for all young people to thrive?

Read the full Brookings article to learn more: here.

*A “good job” is defined as paying at least $35,000 per year and $57,000 at the median for workers ages 25 to 35 nationally, with adjustments based on cost-of-living differences across states.

Dr. Carnevale is the director and research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. CEW is a research and policy institute within Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the links among education, career qualifications, and workforce demands.

Martha Ross is a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, where she researches and writes about workers and the labor market, with a focus on creating a healthy economy that offers opportunity for all.

Thanks to Kathryn Peltier Campbell for editorial feedback; Artem Gulish for quantitative feedback; Fan Zhang for graphic design; and Sojung Ha for publication support. Follow CEW on Twitter (@GeorgetownCEW), LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook.