“Young people with college degrees are more likely to be employed, they are more likely to be earning money,” said Hershbein.
Among young people who don’t have bachelor’s degrees, there is a larger share who are sitting out—meaning, not even looking for work. The Labor Department doesn’t count them in the unemployment rate. Rather, the unemployment rate includes only people actively looking for work.
Hershbein found that in the first quarter the labor-force participation rate—the share of the population either working or looking for work—averaged 75.9% for people whose educations span high school through associate degrees. That was down from 77.1% in the first quarter of 2019. Meanwhile, the participation rate for young people with bachelor’s degrees was 86.7%, up from 85.7%.
So it looks as if the narrowing gap in the unemployment rate for young college graduates and their less-educated peers has come about because the college crowd is participating more actively in the labor market while others are moving to the sidelines.