This year's high school and college graduates don't face as dire an employment picture as graduates during and immediately after the recession, but that doesn't mean they've got it easy. According to a new Economic Policy Institute report, both unemployment and underemployment remain high for young workers —there's 7.2 percent unemployment and 14.9 percent underemployment among young college graduates, where in 2007, before the recession, the same group had 5.5 percent unemployment and 9.6 percent underemployment. For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is a shocking 19.5 percent, with underemployment close to twice that. And young black and Latino people face an even worse employment picture.

Not only is unemployment high, but wages are stagnant:



The real (inflation-adjusted) wages of young high school graduates are 5.5 percent lower today than in 2000, and the wages of young college graduates are 2.5 percent lower.

Women in particular have seen large declines in hourly wages, among both high school and college graduates.

Between 2004 and 2014, there was a 92 percent increase in the number of student loan borrowers and a 74 percent increase in average student loan balances (according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York).

And college graduates, while they have much better odds of finding work than do high school graduates, face significant debt, with college costs having more than doubled in the past 30 years:But you know the Republican answer to this—screw creating jobs or alleviating student debt, Republicans just want to talk about bootstraps.