Rogé Karma

This is where I'm of two minds on this.

Something I didn't mention about the paper originally is that there are actually two factors going on.

One of them is the aging of the population.

The other thing that is contributing to this is a slowdown in new business formation.

Where do young people historically, where are they most likely to work?

Startups.

At the same time that we've seen the population age, we've seen less new businesses being created.

And so at the same time that you have within existing firms, more older workers, you have less new businesses being created and employing young people.

Well, what also have we seen over the past few years?

An explosion of new startups, an explosion of new businesses,

First enabled by remote work, but right now, likely because of AI.

It is an observed statistic.

It has risen at its fastest rate over the past few years ever.

These are like, this is, it came out of seemingly nowhere and it is at some of its highest, new business formation is at some of its highest levels in at least 50 years.

And so what you can also imagine happening is that at the same time that we had the workforce aging,

You can also imagine these new tools, these new AI tools enable young people to avoid playing that game of musical chairs altogether to be able, young people who are at the frontier of technology being able to create new startups and therefore create a level of new business formation and economic dynamism that can actually maybe shock the labor market into being a little bit more dynamic and friendly to young people.

I'm really happy you went there because there are two things that are true at once.

It is both true that what is often called the college wage premium, which is the premium in lifetime earnings that college graduates earn over non-graduates, that really has declined.

The employment premium, as we've been talking about, the rate at which college graduates find jobs over non-graduates, that has also declined.

The gap between these groups is shrinking.