SocraticGadfly: Dear COVID Millennials: Get a fricking clue about salaries

July 01, 2022

Dear COVID Millennials: Get a fricking clue about salaries

Yeah, it's easy to stereotype younger generations. But, when they serve up stupidity on a platter, it's not stereotyping.

Via an independent PR rep who regularly emails my newspaper:

A recent survey by Clever Real Estate found that while the average starting salary for college graduates is $55,260, current college students expect to make $103,880 at their first job...

Wow.

It's a wow on both the total and the percentages. In other words, they're expecting to make DOUBLE what is actually out there.

This reminds me indirectly of a self-survey by the original Occupy Zucotti Park movement that led me to conclude they were a mix of physics PhDs and mathematics MA and MS grads butt-hurt that they had missed out on being part of the "rise of the quants," along with a few new law school grads butt-hurt they'd missed out their big bucks writing legal paperwork for that.

The other interesting part is that this seems provoked by COVID, as the butt-hurt non-quants were provoked by the Great Recession. Clever says that in 2019, the estimates were off by a little over $10k, or about 22 percent. That's still bad, but not THAT bad.

Is it a self-reinforcing loop of too much social media? Inflation? Bad work by college career counselors? A mix of all of the above? Other items?

Because it is correlated, though not necessarily causally so, with COVID, I added that to the headline.

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