"You know close to 50% of new grads are unemployed right?"
No, I didn't know that, but the statistic itself is largely unhelpful without a demographic breakdown. I would be curious as to the distribution itself by degree. I would additionally hypothesize that degrees that are more "geared" towards entering the workforce (Engineering) would have significantly lower unemployment numbers than degrees that are primarily designed as an intellectual pursuit. While there is nothing wrong with intellectual pursuits, obtaining such as degree without the desire to ultimately enter academia is a strategically poor decision to make.
I imagine that re-stating this metric by degree will tell a very different story.
Because I suspect that presenting the data this way masks the reality of why there are sheer number of people who can't find work. But even without major (which I was simply curious about), the data set is suspiciously aggregated.
For example, what if we were to drill down into the data and discover that in the metric "Some college or degree" that 99% of the individuals who could not find work were in the "some college" category and only 1% were in the "degree" category. That would paint an entirely different picture: having a college degree is incredibly useful, but attending college without completing the degree is not very useful in terms of being employable.
I imagine that re-stating this metric by degree will tell a very different story.