Unemployment Rates by Education

I was talking with my roommate (who is looking for a job) about the average chances of finding employment for a person who is demographically like her. I know, roughly, the breakdown by race and gender from the BLS report I mentioned below, but we wondered about the breakdown by education.

I found this graph on Calculated Risk via a post on Matthew Yglesias' blog (click on it to see a larger version).

This graph shows unemployment rates since 1992 for the 25 and over lot by education.

The conclusion to be drawn here is that while unemployment is currently high for all education levels, it is much higher (and has risen much more over the past year) for those with lower levels of education. For example, those in the labor force with less than a high school diploma (16% of whom are unemployed, up from 9% in January '09) or a high school diploma only (10% of whom are unemployed, up from 5% in January '09) face very difficult conditions.

Yglesias points out that "mass unemployment is really not a crisis-level issue among those with bachelor’s degrees." BA holders face a 4.8% rate of unemployment (up from 4% in January '09). This rate is, in fact, around national level of unemployment in the pre-recession economy.