College Grads Struggle To Find Jobs—A Boon For America’s Schools?

According to a Goldman Sachs analysis of federal data, the college graduating class of 2024 is having a dickens of a time finding attractive jobs. That seems counterintuitive, given that the national labor market is extremely tight—unemployment around 4%. But that average masks a lot of variation, and the post-Covid job market has been much stronger for lower-skill, lower-wage workers than for newbie college grads.

Partly that’s because some major employees, especially in the tech sector, which staffed up big time during the pandemic, probably overdid it. Now, with interest rates high, and the era of free money over, they have had to tighten their belts and shrink their payrolls. Meanwhile, the anticipation of an AI-driven revolution in staff productivity has some other employers thinking that maybe they can do without so many junior associates. Then there’s the age-old concern that “kids these days” aren’t worth hiring, now exacerbated by pandemic-induced skill gaps.

If history is a guide, whatever kinks we see in the system right now, newly minted college graduates will turn out to do just fine, given that their skills continue to bring a significant wage premium. But in the short term, at least, the fact that tens of thousands of talented young people are struggling to find lucrative first jobs is great news for employers that need talent, have flexible job requirements, and pay decent wages for newly graduated professionals.

Guess who fits that description? America’s public schools!

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our education system to hire people who otherwise might not give teaching a serious look. The upsides are significant. Research by Harvard’s Martin West found that teachers hired during recessions, when schools have greater access to talented people, tend to outperform their peers in terms of boosting student learning. But schools can only seize the day if they are willing to abandon their dysfunctional HR policies.

Teaching is more lucrative than you might think

It might surprise some readers that our public schools could be an attractive option for underemployed or unemployed college graduates. Isn’t it a lot of work for very little pay? But teacher salaries in most states are higher than most of us realize. In 2021, the journal Education Next asked a representative sample of Americans to guess how much their local districts paid teachers, and they lowballed the real number by 50%, or more than $20,000! As of the 2022–23 school year, the average teacher salary had reached almost $70,000. In California, New York, and Massachusetts, it exceeded $90,000.

No doubt, teaching for a lifetime doesn’t offer as generous of a lifestyle as most other professions do, given that top salaries rarely reach six figures. But someone who wants to teach for a few years in their twenties can earn a comfortable living, including summers off and great health benefits.

The problem, alas, is that many public-school systems aren’t hiring. Widespread teacher shortages have quickly turned into widespread reductions in force. That’s because, like those tech companies, schools staffed up big time during the pandemic, when they were flush with federal pandemic relief aid. That money is now mostly gone, so they need to shrink their headcounts, and most are doing so either through attrition or, if necessary, layoffs via “last in, first out” (LIFO) policies. Both of those are terrible management practices, as they end up treating teachers like indistinguishable widgets. Smart organizations in any field would instead use this opportunity to let go of their least effective employees.

Schools will say that’s impossible thanks to tenure protections that have been won by all-powerful teachers’ unions. But teachers brought on during the hiring surge of the past few years don’t yet enjoy those protections, and those who have turned out to be duds could be let go, making room for new talent, including recent college graduates. It just takes courageous leadership to do it.

Given local education politics, many systems will likely take the path of least resistance instead. That leaves charter schools, which are well positioned to recruit from this larger talent pool, given that most are not unionized and don’t have to worry about tenure or LIFO.

Most charters can also hire non-certified or alternatively-certified teachers, meaning they can bring in people who majored in an academic subject like math or English, give them some short-term training to get them up to speed on teaching methods, support them once they are in the classroom, and help them work toward getting their teaching license over the next couple of years.

Everyone would benefit from aggressive efforts to get talented college grads into America’s classrooms—our schools, the graduates, and especially the students. Now it’s up to our educational leaders to make it happen.