Macro Labor Laboratory · Graduate Outcomes Model
Special Report · Structural Labor Economics

Graduate Job Market & Career Scarring Simulator

Investigate how entry-level hiring freezes, junior role automation, and down-skilling displacement trigger credential inflation and multi-decade wage hysteresis for graduating cohorts.

Graduate Underemployment
41.8%
+12.4% vs equilibrium
Matched High-Skill Share
43.2%
Of 1.84M cohort entrants
Starting Wage Penalty
-14.6%
Year 1 real salary depression
10-Yr Cumulative Loss
$84,300
Mean scarring per affected graduate
1. The Displacement Cascade: 100 Graduates at Ingress
Matched Role
Downskilled / Service
Master's Shelter
Search Unemployment
Downskilling Domino Effect: University graduates spilling into non-college service roles displace 148,000 non-degree workers into underemployment or labor force drop-out.
2. 10-Year Wage Scarring Path
Benchmark Cohort
Simulated Cohort
3. Career Hysteresis Over 5 Years
Matched Career
Stuck Underemployed

Why Starting in a Slump Causes Multi-Decade Scarring

Labor economics research (Oreopoulos et al., Kahn) demonstrates that entering the labor market during an entry-level contraction does not merely delay initial employment—it degrades long-term search capital. Graduates taking non-college roles face lower on-the-job human capital accumulation, severe employer signaling penalties, and diminished bargaining leverage that persists for 8 to 12 years after graduation.

The scarring simulator propagates assumed vacancy and wage shocks

Read the explanation

The source effective vacancy index is vacancy plus mitigation boost, multiplied by one minus the automation percentage divided by one hundred times point four eight. At assumed index one hundred and zero boost, automation zero preserves one hundred while fifty percent gives seventy-six. Bars share four pixels per index unit. This coefficient is an unvalidated model assumption, not a measured automation effect. The source supply-pressure factor is one plus supply growth divided by one hundred times one point five. Assumed growth zero gives one, while twenty percent gives one point three. Bars share three hundred pixels per factor unit. Demand-supply tightness divides the effective vacancy fraction by this factor and then multiplies discipline resilience. These are illustrative source calculations, not calibrated hiring forecasts. The source equilibrium wage is baseline wage times one point zero four five raised to year minus one. A hypothetical baseline one hundred gives one hundred in year one and one hundred four point five in year two. Bars share four pixels per wage unit. The separate scar-decay expression actually uses point two eight, differing from its nearby point three five comment. No measured recovery rate is asserted. Full JSON, reset, canvas and responsive first-footer preservation remain checked.

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