Voters in their 20s should look around for a different kind of Hope and Change in 2012: Obamanomics has hit them the hardest

Ryan Streeter
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My inbox is full of statements from GOP members on the jobs numbers. They basically all say the same thing, using different words: Obama is wrecking America's economy.

They're right to do so, even if some of them sounds overly canned and predictable. The reality is that Obama may well be facing, in Pete Wehner's words, a "Jimmy Carter-like repudiation."

The big question is whether young voters will repudiate Obama on account of the economy. They turned out in droves to elect him in 2008. They are also experiencing the brute downward force of Obamanomics more than any other group. Or, even if Obama's policies aren't to blame for all that's bad in the economy, he certainly hasn't helped them.

Here is something from Economix on Wednesday that suggests recent college graduates should look around for a different kind of Hope and Change in 2012:

In the past 10 years, the number of recent college graduates working in jobs that actually require a college degree has dropped from 60% to 46% (see chart below).

Meanwhile, earnings for jobs requiring a degree have risen (though not dramatically) in the past decade, but earnings for jobs not requiring a degree have dropped by nearly 15%.

So, from this, we can conclude:

• A substantial percentage of college degree holders are taking jobs not requiring a degree, which must contribute at some level to the unemployment levels among those without degrees (and as we all know, unemployment is much higher among those without degrees). So, even if college degree holders have some kind of job, they are leaving fewer jobs for young people who don't have degrees.

• A sizeable percentage of college degree holders with college loans are working in jobs that are paying lower than they were 10 years ago, which means the "college bubble" phenomenon in America is a grim prospect. College debt surpassed credit card debt recently. Somehow, these recent graduates are going to need more income than they are earning to pay off their loans.

• Some undefined but significant percentage of working Americans under the age of 25, who hold degrees, will not experience the earning power of their peers with better jobs ten years from now. When you start out working in a job that is low-paying and requiring lower skill levels, you have a harder time advancing upward later. This has implications for the future state of the tax base, among other things.

Neither party has fully grasped the reality of what is going on in the workforce at the lower end of the age spectrum. However, the GOP has at least put out a jobs agenda that takes aim at some of the key drivers of employers' decisions not to hire or ability to create jobs. We'll see if the millennials take that to heart at the ballot box.