And how are they doing, as a group? Young people don’t seem to have a jobs problem—their jobless rate is a bit elevated, but not alarmingly so. Rather they have a money problem. The jobs they’re getting don’t pay much and their wages aren’t growing. A recent analysis of the Current Population Survey last year found that the median income for people between 25 and 34 has fallen in every major industry but healthcare since the Great Recession began.

Zoom in on recent college graduates, and the picture gets more complicated.

In The Washington Post, Ylan Q. Mui says, "The era of the overeducated barista is coming to a close.” That would be nice, indeed. But the data suggests that the era is hardly over: Overeducated baristas, once totally ubiquitous, are now merely super-abundant. Underemployment (the share of college grads in jobs that historically don’t require a college degree) is high. The quality of these first jobs is getting worse. And, for these reasons, wages are growing slowly, if at all. Now with pictures...

Youth Underemployment Is Rising

College grads still aren’t finding “college jobs.”

Six years into the longest private-sector jobs recovery in history, the underemployment rate for recent college grads is still about 7 percentage points higher than it was in 2000. This is as close as you can get to a “college-educated barista index” in macroeconomics, and it’s not any better today than it was in 2012, 2011, or 2010. The unemployment rate has fallen since those years, but what’s clear is that millions of recent grads are landing in entry-level positions that haven’t historically required four years of studying (not to mention all that student debt).

Unemployment and Underemployment Rates for Young College Grads: 1994-2015​

Job Quality for Recent Grads Has Been Deteriorating

High underemployment isn’t enough on its own to cause much worry. After all, the underemployment category includes jobs as diverse as cashiers ($25,000 a year) and dental hygienists (more than $45,000). So the more important question is: Are underemployed college grads finding better jobs?

Perhaps not. When the New York Fed studied this question last year, it found that “the share of underemployed college graduates in good non-college jobs has fallen sharply, while the share working in low-wage jobs has risen.” And, perhaps more concerning, this shift seems to predate the recession.

For College Grads, a ‘Good’ Job Is Hard to Find

Wages Are Growing Slowly for Some, and Not at All for Many. It’s hard to get a firm grasp on how much young people are making compared to past generations for a few reasons. They are spending more time in school, working more part-time jobs, and have graduated into a historic downturn.

That said, just about every measure finds they are struggling mightily. The Economic Policy Institute has reported that inflation-adjusted wages for recent college graduates have fallen by 7.7 percent since 2000. Last year, the San Francisco Fed produced this graph showing wages for recent college grads essentially hitting a flight ceiling around 2008 while overall wages continued to climb, however slowly.