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How is a new college grad supposed to reap "enormous returns" without significant savings?

• lotsofpulp 2y ago
  From entering a hot labor market with rising wages and investing? The alternative is entering a cool labor market with stagnant or decreasing wages. Obviously, people who already had assets made out better, but that is not a possibility for 99% of high school/college graduates, so useless to consider.
  • abeppu 2y ago
    I think people really over-estimate the wage growth differences between good and bad labor markets. Median usual weekly earnings are (in 1982 Dollars) Q1 2024: 365 Q1 2013: 331 So over 9 years, including the largest bump in wages in generation during the pandemic, wages grew by 1% From the early 80s until now, wage growth was like 0.4% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pagn https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pagn
    • lotsofpulp 2y ago
      I restricted my claim to those who: > obtained in demand credentials or skills From plumbers to programmers, there probably was not a better time in history to get paid. That is the nature of a decade of 0% interest rates, unprecedented in US history. If you did not get paid, it was because you were not shopping around for a buyer willing to pay more (not ascribing blame).