The Great Recession has done great economic damage to young college graduates, forcing many of them into temporary jobs or unemployment. Even those who found employment in their field have not done so well financially, especially when considering the student loan debt many of them carried out of university along with their diploma. Between 2007 when the recession began and 2012, wages of young grads fell 9.4 percent for men and 6.6 percent for women. Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute
reports that in 2012, young college graduates (aged 21-24) earned an average of $16.60 an hour. That's $34,500 annually for a full-time employee. Women graduates did significantly worse at $30,290.
But the recession can't be blamed for the entire problem:
[W]ages of young graduates fared poorly even before the Great Recession began; they saw no growth over the entire period of general wage stagnation that began during the business cycle of 2000–2007. Between 2000 and 2012, the wages of young college graduates decreased 8.5 percent (6.1 percent for men and 10.9 percent for women). These drops translate into substantial amounts of money; for full-time, full-year workers, the hourly wage declines from 2000 to 2012 represent a roughly $3,200 decline.
That's a lot different than what happened from 1995-2000 when wages for young college graduates rose 19.1 percent, with, of course, a lower percentage for women. As pointed out by a
study last fall,
Graduating to a Pay Gap, first-year women college graduates on average make 82 cents for every dollar a man does, even when adjustments are included for choice of degree.