"Trading Caps and Gowns for Mops"

Quentin Fottrell reports on two surveys of 18- to 29-year-old working college grads. An online survey of 500,000 young workers by Payscale.com found that "while 63% of 'Generation Y' workers have a bachelor's degree, the majority of the jobs taken by graduates don't require one." Another survey by Rutgers University reported that "half of graduates in the past 5 years say their jobs didn't require a four-year degree and only 20% said their first job was on their career path."

Worse, employers are hiring older workers over younger ones:

The jobs that once went to recent college graduates are now more often going to older Americans. Over the past year, workers over 55 accounted for 58% of employment growth, says Dean Baker, a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. Why? Employers think older workers are a safer bet and more likely to stay, he says. Unemployment hovered at 6.2% in July for workers over 55, according to the Labor Department, but was more than double that rate — 12.7% — for those ages 18 to 29. As a result, college graduates are finding themselves locked into lower-paid jobs.