03
Mar 10The lottery.
I meant to write about this earlier, but Don Peck’s “The Recession’s Long Shadow” talks about the consequences that recessions have on salaries:
[F]or every one-percentage-point increase in the national unemployment rate, the starting income of new graduates fell by as much as 7 percent; the unluckiest graduates of the decade, who emerged into the teeth of the 1981–82 recession, made roughly 25 percent less in their first year than graduates who stepped into boom times.
[...]
[T]he unlucky graduates never closed the gap. Seventeen years after graduation, those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. When you add up all the earnings losses over the years, Kahn says, it’s as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size.
The whole piece is expansive, so I’ll have more on other parts of it later. But, you know, here’s a depressing place to start.