We Are Living in the Era of Job Gentrification

The tennis star Venus Williams just earned a business degree from Indiana University East. Now let’s hope she doesn’t come for your job. The way the workforce is shaping up, employers are increasingly hiring people with college degrees for jobs that don’t require college-degree skills. John Cassidy took a look at why this is happening in his article “College Calculus” in this week’s New Yorker.

It’s not news that college grads have lately been taking jobs that are beneath their academic qualifications, especially since the recession. “But something deeper, and more lasting, also seems to be happening,” writes Cassidy. Pointing to a 2013 study conducted by Canadian economists, he reports on the decreasing demand from employers for college-educated workers coinciding with significant growth in the supply of low-wage jobs since 2000. Which led the economists to conclude: