Regions with a higher concentration of college graduates tend to be more innovative, have higher living standards and experience more rapid economic growth.2 So a college education plays an important role in helping individuals prosper, as well as in strengthening the broader economy. More recently, though, rising costs, increasing student debt and widespread reports of recent college graduates not being able to find good jobs have raised some troubling questions about whether going to college is still a good investment. In fact, some of our own research, including material that we discussed at our last press briefing, has shown the dramatic increase in student debt over the past decade.3 In today’s briefing, we’re going to take a  2  See, for example, Edward L. Glaeser, Jose A. Scheinkman, and Andrei Shleifer (1995) “Economic Growth in a Cross-Section of Cities,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 36, 117–43; Gerald A. Carlino, Satyajit Chatterjee, and Robert M. Hunt (2007) “Urban Density and the Rate of Invention,” Journal of Urban Economics, 61, 389–419; and Jaison R. Abel and Todd M. Gabe (2011) “Human Capital and Economic Activity in Urban America,” Regional Studies, 45, 1079–90.
3  See, for example, Press Briefing on Q4 2012 Household Debt and Credit Report; Meta Brown and Sydnee Caldwell, “Young Student Loan Borrowers Retreat from Housing and Auto Markets Liberty Street Economics  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  close look at the question of just how weak today’s labor market is for new college graduates by putting their recent experience into context using some hard data. It is important for us to undertake this kind of analysis because, as we’ll show, newly minted graduates always take some time to transition into the labor market and find jobs that utilize their education. And young people with college degrees still fare far better than those without. At the same time, with the sluggish jobs recovery from the recession, it’s clear that the transition of recent graduates into the labor market is taking longer, and they’ve experienced higher unemployment and higher underemployment than in years past.4 Still, while times have gotten tougher for recent graduates, we shouldn’t be too hasty in concluding that getting a college education won’t help people find good jobs. I will now ask Jason Bram to present an update of economic conditions in our region. Blog Post, April 17, 2013; and Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Wilbert van der Klaauw, and Joelle Scally, “Just Released: The Geography of Student Debt,” Liberty Street Economics Blog Post, May 14, 2013. 4  Underemployment, for purposes of this presentation, refers to college graduates working in jobs that typically don’t require a college degree.