For Ron Sliter, getting a master’s degree seemed like a path to job security.
He looked forward to climbing thecorporate ladderand enjoying a long, successful career in the civilian world.
Then, in January 2023, he got laid off.
Since then, he’s applied to thousands of roles to no avail.
After more than two years, he’s still unemployed.
“It’s disheartening,” he tells me.
And you realize it doesn’t exist."
I’ve been calling it awhite-collar recession, assuming that it’s temporary.
It’s normal, after all, to experience dips in the job market.
“Suddenly, that feels like it’s changing.”
I worry that we’re in a comparable moment for knowledge workers.
They were told they were the most productive workers in the world.
Suddenly that’s being undermined."
Education has long served as a ticket to a better, more secure life.
The more schooling you had, the more likely you were to survive the suddentechnological disruption.
Economists gave the phenomenon an awkward name:skill-biased technological change.
In plainspeak:Get more degrees or you’re screwed.
Education was the one thing that kept you safe in an increasingly cutthroat economy.
But then, over the past few years, the demand for super-educated professionals suddenly took a deep dive.
A variety of factors have combined to alter the white-collar landscape.
The first was the pandemic-driven shift to remote work.
And then there’s AI.
The faster technology changes, the faster your fancy degree is likely to feel outdated.
“What we think of as ‘old’ is a lot younger now,” Terrazas says.
“With the accelerated technical frontier, what it means to be out of date is creeping downward.”
That’s what happened to a millennial I’ll call Tara.
Unemployed for 14 months and counting, she’s applied to something like 650 jobs.
“I’m stumped at just how hard it’s been.”
As they grow increasingly dejected, some opt for lower-paying roles; others give up altogether.
It doesn’t just hurt the people who can’t find work.
It also hurts the broader economy.
The goal, he says, is “not to pigeonhole myself.”
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the modern economy has been dividing up the workforce into ever-narrower specializations.
“Specialization can create productivity-enhancing high returns,” he says.
“But it can also create obsolescence.”
If he were thinking about getting a doctorate today, he’s not sure he’d do it.
Advanced-degree holders, of course, continue to be the economy’s overwhelming winners.
Most of them are gainfully employed, with salaries that are typically far higher than anyone else’s.
If even a Ph.D. can’t keep us safe from economic catastrophe, what will?
There was comfort in that predictability.
Catey, the JD-Ph.D., counts himself among the lucky ones.
“That’s not how it turned out.”
Andy Kiersz contributed analysis.
Aki Itois a chief correspondent at Business Insider.
