Like many college students, Milford resident Heidi Cruz worked retail to help cover her tuition while earning her undergraduate and graduate degrees. But she never imagined she’d still be working retail more than two years after graduating with a master’s degree in writing.
At 27, Cruz’s primary income comes from Lowe’s, where she works about 30 hours a week for $10 an hour. She spends another 8 to 12 hours a week tutoring international students in reading and writing, a job paying slightly more at $15 per hour, but the hours and location fluctuate. She’s been trying to land an entry-level job in communications or education for more than two years, and has even sought professional help with her resume and cover letters, but struggles to get employers' attention. “People look at my degree and say, ‘What did you think you were going to be able to do with that?’” she says. “It is very frustrating.”
Cruz is among a growing number of college graduates who are stuck working low-income jobs, a trend that peaked during the Great Recession but that labor economists say continues to persist even as the economy is recovering. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 260,000 people nationwide with a college or professional degree made at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in 2013, the most recent data. While that number is lower than it was in 2010, when there were more than 317,000 workers with college degrees in minimum wage jobs, it’s still more than double what it was in 2005.
While there is little concrete data available about how many NH workers with degrees are working low-income jobs, state researchers and economists say there are indications that some workers here are in the same situation. New Hampshire boasts one of the most educated populations in the nation; nearly 34 percent of residents aged 25 and older held at least a bachelor’s degree in 2013, compared to 28 percent nationally, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But the job market for college graduates in NH is among the toughest in the country. The Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. analyzed job postings on 15,000 websites to see where jobs were most plentiful. New Hampshire ranks near the bottom at 41 out of 50, with fewer than 7,500 jobs available to college grads. (In comparison, Massachusetts had the best online job market, with nearly 95,000 jobs available to college grads.)
That means competition is fierce, and that has likely forced some highly educated workers into lower paying jobs, says Steve Norton, the executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. “There is every reason to believe the national statistics that show more highly educated people taking lower-paying jobs are true here also,” he says.
In particular, it’s likely the trend is more prevalent where there are fewer high-paying jobs and more retail and tourism positions, like in the North Country, Norton says. “You can imagine that … you could have a person with a college degree stuck picking up a job as a waitress or a sales person in Conway,” he says.
Labor economists attribute the high-education, low-salary trend to a range of factors, including workplace shifts toward more jobs requiring sophisticated skills or credentials, more college graduates, and more employers expecting college degrees for jobs that once required less education. “The workplace has really changed. The U.S. workforce is just not growing enough to absorb all the talented people, and there’s more people going to college now than ever before. That’s adding up to a tough market, especially for new graduates,” says David DeLong, author of “Graduate to a Great Job: Make Your College Degree Pay Off in Today’s Market.”
The problem is worsened by persistently stagnant wages, says Kristin Smith, a family demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy at UNH. Since about 2001, wages for millions of workers have essentially flatlined, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some indicators do show that some NH graduates may be faring better. Graduates from the University System of NH (USNH), which includes the University of NH, Plymouth State University, Keene State College and Granite State College, have one of the lowest student default rates in the country, says USNH Chancellor Todd Leach. “That’s the best measure we have of students graduating and getting jobs that pay well enough to pay back their student loans,” he says. And he says surveys of alumni consistently show that most graduates get jobs within one year of graduation in their field.
A wider problem
Newly minted graduates aren’t the only ones struggling with low wages. As more colleges and universities forgo hiring full-time faculty in favor of using temporary part-time instructors, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for aspiring college professors to land a well-paid teaching job. Instead, they are scraping by as adjunct professors—temporary instructors hired semester-by-semester to teach a course or two without health insurance or benefits. Adjuncts and earn $2,700 per course on average, according to a report by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce. Though most adjuncts must have a master’s degree or PhD, the hours they spend teaching, grading, reading, preparing for classes, responding to student e-mails, and holding office hours means their compensation often barely adds up to minimum wage.
Adjuncts now make up the majority of instructional staff at colleges and universities nationwide, comprising over 75 percent of the total teaching staff as of fall 2009, based on a report by the American Association of University Professors. That is a sharp increase from 1969, when adjuncts made up just 21 percent of college instructors.
New Hampshire’s largest colleges mirror that trend. The number of part-time instructional faculty increased between 2003 and 2012 at most USNH institutions. At Plymouth State University, the number of adjuncts jumped from 180 in 2003 to 259 by 2012, according to the NH Center for Public Policy Studies. Granite State College was the only USNH institution with a decrease in part-time faculty.
In comparison, the number of full-time faculty increased slightly at Keene and Plymouth, but dropped by more than 8 percent at UNH, the state’s largest university, from 651 full-time professors in 2003 to 596 in 2012. “The decrease in the number of full-time instructional faculty at UNH and (UNH-Manchester) occurred even as full-time degree candidate enrollment was increasing,” the report noted.
For a NH adjunct, that low pay comes with long hours. To earn $35,000, an adjunct has to teach at least 13 classes per year. In comparison, a full-time professor typically teaches about seven classes per year. The average salary for full-time professors in the U.S. is $84,303, according to the American Association of University Professors. Glassdoor.com reports that the salary for a UNH assistant professor at the Durham campus ranges from $67,140 to $118,324.
The value of a degree
Despite salary and job market challenges, data suggests that earning opportunities are still significantly better for college graduates. In fact, the value of a degree may be increasing. The Pew Research Center found that workers with a high-school degree in 1965 earned about 81 percent of what their college-educated peers earned; in 2013, high school grads only earned about 62 percent of what a college graduate earned.
In NH, workers face increasing pressure to earn a degree to stay competitive. Another Georgetown study found that 68 percent of jobs in NH will require education beyond high school by 2020. That statistic recently prompted the Community College System of NH and other partners to launch an initiative aimed at ensuring that 65 percent of residents aged 25 and older have some form of post-secondary education by 2025. “We need to ensure that we’re doing what we can to get more students into the pipeline so we can meet the needs of our workplaces,” Leach says.
But some graduates will fare better than others. Students with majors related to in-demand industries such as technology, computer science, health care and accounting will be “pulled into the job market,” says DeLong, while students who major in subjects without a direct career path may struggle more. “If you’re graduating from UNH with a BA in history, you’re running up against obstacles that didn’t used to be a problem,” he says.
Some NH students may already be thinking along those lines. Last year, 1,870 USNH students earned degrees in science, technology, engineering or math—up 29 percent from five years ago, according to the USNH 2014 Factbook.
At Southern NH University, MaryKate Erickson, 21, says she chose to major in business administration over elementary education, in part, because she knew a business degree would offer better salary and job prospects. It turned out to be “the best decision I could have made,” she says. Her major opened her eyes to the range of possibilities she could pursue with a business degree. “I figured entering a major with a number of different opportunities would be smart,” she says. Erickson, who graduated in May, recently landed her first job as a technical recruiter at a staffing firm, a position she says exceeded her salary expectations.
At USNH, Leach says officials are focused on making sure students are both earning a degree and gaining professional experience through internships and undergraduate research programs, and other hands-on opportunities. Officials are also placing more emphasis on retention and helping students choose majors, including steering interested students toward STEM majors, as that’s where many of NH’s best job openings are now and will be in the future. “That’s a particular focus, an area where we feel some responsibility to make sure we’re addressing the needs of the state’s workforce,” Leach says.