Investing in additional education is a classic way of mitigating the negative effects of graduating in a recession, and empirical research suggests that the lifetime returns to completing a college degree are substantial on average. 7  the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and are adjusted by the Federal Reserve Board’s staff to constant 2009 dollars using the personal consumption expenditures index.
2  See Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance (2015), “Upskilling: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Skilled Workers Are Plentiful?“ Working Paper Series 14–17 (Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, January).