Derek Thompson

And so what you could also- And just for listeners to jump in here, this is not some impressionistic point.

The federal government has said, starting around 2020, 2021, the rate of, I believe the technical term is new business formation, has jumped up considerably and stayed at an elevated level for the last five years.

So this is an observed statistic.

I like that this allows us to turn the page a bit because first what we did is we talked about the facts.

We talked about reality.

What's the reality of young people in unemployment?

What's the reality of their impressions of the labor market?

In short, bad and bad.

Then we talked a little bit about what are some possible explanations for this phenomenon?

AI, the big freeze, shit keeps happening, Federal Reserve, inflation, even demographics.

Now I want to talk about what we should do with this information.

Someone who's between the ages of 22 to 30, let's say, could hear your last answer and say, all right, if established firms are seeing this game of musical chairs slow down significantly, then maybe my best employment prospect is either to start my own company or join a company that's just getting started.

Another decision that someone could make, listening to the last 40 minutes of you and I going back and forth,

is maybe I should skip college entirely.

Maybe college just isn't as valuable as it used to be.

So you have the statistics.

You talk to economists.

How do you feel about this incipient impression that college is just not where it's at anymore, that it's just not worth it the same way that it used to be worth it?

Whenever I report on this subject, on the travails of young people and the miseries of young people today, I will invariably get emails and DMs from economists who will make one of the following four points.

Four points here.