Since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been renewed interest in providing financial education to improve consumer financial decision making, especially among youth. Using a randomized controlled trial, we estimate the causal effects of a financial coaching program for young adults from linked individual‐level administrative credit reports and self‐reported survey responses. Within six months, the treatment group was 10 percentage points more likely to have access to credit compared to the control group. After 18 months, the average credit score was 26 points higher for the treatment group versus the control group, raising the likelihood of achieving a “good” credit rating by 8 percentage points. Consequently, the treatment group was less likely to rely on alternative financial services and paid lower interest rates on car loans. These impacts are largely driven by improvements in self‐efficacy, offering important insights for policymakers seeking to incorporate financial education into youth workforce development programs.

Using a novel database of 159 million online job postings, we examine changes in employer skill requirements for education and specific skillsets between 2007 and 2017. We find that upskilling-in terms of increasing demands for bachelor's degrees as well as software skillswas a persistent trend among high-skill occupations, but either a temporary or non-existent phenomenon among middle-skill and low-skill occupations. We also find evidence that persistent upskilling in the high-skill sector contributed to greater occupational mismatch that remained elevated during the recovery from the Great Recession. In contrast, labor market mismatch had largely dissipated within the low-skill and middle-skill sectors by 2017.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract