However, I think when it comes to your number two above, young highly educated people, that they will be fine. I do think not enough are majoring in STEM fields like engineering, but even then, the unemployment rate for college graduates is supposedly only 5% right now. That's full employment technically.
[/QUOTE
They get employment by displacing the lesser educated, but salaries drop and stay low
WSJ last year
"The bad news for this spring's college graduates is that they're entering the toughest labor market in at least 25 years.
The worse news: Even those who land jobs will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared to those lucky enough to graduate in better times, studies show."
College Graduates to See Low Wages for Years - WSJ.com
"College graduates remain better off than those with only high-school diplomas, in good times and bad. The unemployment rate in April among four-year college graduates between 20 and 24 years old was 6.1%; among those the same age with only high-school diplomas, it was 19.6%.
But a college degree isn't an automatic ticket to upward mobility, either. Even before the recession began, graduates were seeing their wages shrink. Between 2002 and 2007, according to government data, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage for men ages 25 to 35 with bachelor's degrees (and no graduate degrees) fell 4.5%. For the typical woman, inflation-adjusted wages fell 4.8%."
My students are engineers, who do better than most, but they describe more "contract jobs" and other non obvious job reductions, e.g. fewer employers are willing to pay for graduate school .