Even as the job market has rebounded during the last two years, the employment prospects for young college graduates have continued to deteriorate, says a new report by Paul E. Harrington and Neeta P. Fogg, labor economists in Philadelphia-based Drexel University's Center for Labor Market and Policy.

Even during this period of net job creation, young college graduates saw their employment rates fall at the same time as their mal-employment rates, or underemployment rate, increased.

The report says that there was a sizable decline between the winter-spring of 2007 and 2012 in the proportion of all young college graduates who worked in a college labor market job, a decline from 54.1 percent to 43.9 percent among 20- to 24-year-olds and 63.9 percent to 56.7 percent among 25- to 29-year-olds. A sizeable part of these declines occurred in the jobs-recovery period during the last two years.

"The promise of an economic return to a college investment is, at its most fundamental level, found in the labor market," Harrington says. "The ability of young Americans to prosper through investments in human capital has diminished as access to jobs that utilize the skills, knowledge, and abilities developed in college has declined."

The Center for Labor Markets and Policy (CLMP) conducts applied research and provides education and technical assistance on human resource development issues and their connections to the labor market. CLMP uses its expertise in human resource development economics and labor market analysis to support policy makers and practitioners in developing improved human resource development planning, programming, evaluation, and finance at local, regional, and state levels.