Skip to content
Connect
Stories

The potential dark side of a white-hot labor market

People in this story

New York Times, June 2022

Shanna Jackson, the president of Nashville State Community College, is struggling with a dilemma that reads like good news: Her students are taking jobs from employers who are eager to hire, and paying them good wages. The problem is that students often drop their plans to earn a degree in order to take the attractive positions offered by these desperate employers. Ms. Jackson is worried that when the labor market cools—a near certainty as the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates, slowing the economy in an attempt to control rapid inflation—an incomplete education will come back to haunt these students.

“If you’ve got housing costs rising, gas prices going up, food prices going up, the short-term decision is: Let me make money now, and I’ll go back to school later,” Ms. Jackson said. Anecdotally, she said, the issue is most intense in hospitality-related training programs, where credentials are often valued but not technically required.

Continue reading at the New York Times.

More Stories

Picture of Dasani water bottles.

Gov. Healey to sign order banning single-use plastic bottles for state agencies

09.21.2023
Co-founder Andrew Song of solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets holds a weather balloon filled with helium, air and sulfur dioxide at a park in Reno, Nevada, United States on February 12, 2023.

Some Politicians Want to Research Geoengineering as a Climate Solution. Scientists Are Worried

09.18.2023
Plastics and other trash littered a salt marsh in Chelsea in April.

Massachusetts lags on banning plastics

09.25.23
Op-eds