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Gallup: Underemployment Tougher on Highly Educated Americans.
Gallup ^ | 07/01/2011 | Elizabeth Mendes

Posted on 07/01/2011 5:24:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Underemployment is tougher on the life evaluation ratings of college graduates and postgraduates than on Americans who are less educated. The percentage of highly educated underemployed Americans who rate their lives well enough to be considered "thriving" is 17 percentage points lower than their employed counterparts. Among the less educated, thriving drops 10 points when underemployed.

Although underemployment appears to have a greater effect on how the highly educated rate their lives, they are still more positive than the less educated who are also underemployed.

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data from Jan. 1 to June 2, 2011, find that on average 60% of all employed Americans are thriving, but that this rises to 67% among college graduates and 71% among postgraduates.

Gallup categorizes Americans as thriving, struggling, or suffering depending on how they rate their present life and life five years from now using a ladder scale, which is based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where "0" represents the worst possible life and "10" the best. Those who are thriving rate their present life a 7 or higher and their life in five years an 8 or higher.

Mid- to Late-Career Aged Also See a Large Decline in Life Evaluation With Underemployment

The effects of underemployment on a person's life evaluation also vary by age. Americans who are more likely to be in their mid- to late career -- those between the ages of 30 and 64 -- are the most likely across age groups to downgrade their life outlook if underemployed. The percentage of underemployed 30- to 44-year-olds who are thriving is 23 points lower than those who are the same age but employed. Underemployed 45- to 64-year-olds are 21 points less likely to be thriving than their employed counterparts.

(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: education; jobs; underemployment


1 posted on 07/01/2011 5:24:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

No surprise there. People invested in additional education always have elevated expectations for their investment. It’s like people who invested in homeownership or stock have expectations that values will increase over time.

It’s hard for people to believe that what I’ve been saying for over 2 years now - all things changed on 11/4/08...nothing will again be the same.


2 posted on 07/01/2011 5:46:43 AM PDT by anniegetyourgun
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To: SeekAndFind

To the young, underemployed, people out there who voted for Obama: How’s that hope and change working out for ya?


3 posted on 07/01/2011 5:56:05 AM PDT by Ben Chad
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To: SeekAndFind

The Left needs overeducated, underemployed people who believe that the World has done them Wrong. This has all been planned.


4 posted on 07/01/2011 5:59:35 AM PDT by Tax-chick (It goes without saying, so you can stop saying it.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Too bad. Higher educated Americans should keep the “Galt” approach in the back of their minds. Were I out of work I'd take a great deal of joy in the fact that I wasn't being “milked” for the $70K/yr the government is screwing me out of now. There are other options than feeding the beast.
5 posted on 07/01/2011 6:08:43 AM PDT by RavenATB ("Destroy the family and you destroy the country!" ~Vladimir Lenin)
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To: SeekAndFind

Highly educated or over educated? Sorry kid but what exactly did you expect to gain from that MA in Medeival Italian Literature?


6 posted on 07/01/2011 6:28:31 AM PDT by pgkdan (Time for a Cain Mutiny!)
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To: SeekAndFind
Occasionally, Gallup becomes Master of the Obvious. This is one of them.


7 posted on 07/01/2011 6:41:45 AM PDT by Sooth2222 ("Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself." M.Twain)
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To: Sooth2222
Exactly

Sounds like a lot of people over at Gallup are over employed.

8 posted on 07/01/2011 6:49:45 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: anniegetyourgun

1104, a worse disaster then 911. I recall a certain heavy feeling in the air the morning after and people muttering under their breath about what this portended for the future. Some, like me, openly said that it was the end of America as we had known it and we would live out the rest of our lives, be they long or short, with only memories of what had been the greatest nation ever. Some, the willfully ignorant or just stupid, could not understand why everyone was not dancing with joy and called those of us who actually understood what had happened “RACISTS”. Many of those are strangely silent now, some wearing a dazed, weary and dejected expression, some angrily saying, “This is not what I voted for!” In reality it is EXACTLY what they voted for but they were too willfully blind to see it before they voted for it.


9 posted on 07/01/2011 7:00:14 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a liberal is like teaching algebra to a tomcat.)
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To: pgkdan

A man showed me a resume, in fact two resumes, yesterday. The resumes were both for the same woman and showed a series of degrees, up to and including a doctorate, all in subjects usually referred to by the blanket term, “underwater basket weaving” and apparently all from an online university. The bearer was a woman who said she was receiving eight hundred dollars in food stamp assistance for her three children and has been unable to find even a minimum wage job. With all her degrees I would be very surprised if she could pass the finals for a public high school from fifty years ago. The resumes were consigned to the circular file.


10 posted on 07/01/2011 7:05:18 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a liberal is like teaching algebra to a tomcat.)
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To: pgkdan
Sorry kid but what exactly did you expect to gain from that MA in Medieval Italian Literature?

In addition to enriching one's life, I would think that earning a master's degree in medieval Italian literature could lead to several opportunities. Just having to master Italian, a basic requirement for such a degree, could open a number of career paths.

However, advanced degree programs in subjects such as "education" are often of questionable value, depending on the institution.

11 posted on 07/01/2011 7:23:55 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: RipSawyer

It was an awful morning...even before the first votes were cast on the east coast. When I wrote here on FR that morning (around 5 AM pacific time) about the beginning of the end of this nation, most just told me I was over-reacting and we’d be able to stand against Obama’s intiatives. No one seemed to realize we had just handed over all branches of our government to the radical Leftists and their stinking leader who had come to plunder & destroy the country - before handing us over to our enemies. Sadly, some still don’t see that.


12 posted on 07/01/2011 2:07:15 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
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