It’s reunion day at the UC Davis School of Law in Northern California. A pretty even mix of baby boomer, Gen X and millennial alumni are milling about the buffet line for crudités and bacon-wrapped …something.
Class of 1982 graduate Cheryl Gertler has that squinty look on her face of, ‘I think I know you. Do I know you?’
“I can’t recognize anybody,” said Gertler, laughing. “A lot of gray and white hair here, so I’m not sure anymore.”
Alumni from ’82 are here, as are grads from the class of 1992, 2002 and 2007 — all classes that graduated in or around a recession.
Research suggests that graduating into a recession hurts future employment and wages for at least a decade, maybe longer. And with the prospect of a Federal Reserve-induced downturn coming sometime in the near future, that’s a scary fact for young lawyers, who know that certain parts of the legal industry can be especially vulnerable to the business cycle.
That was certainly the case for Gertler when she was a law student.
“Low wages and not being able to purchase very much, people were not buying things,” is how Gertler describes the early 1980s. “I remember visiting my parents up in Oregon, and it just felt like nobody could really spend money anymore.”
For all the glib memes about how easy and cheap everything was for baby boomers, the unlucky ones like Gertler who started their careers in the early ’80s faced a gnarly economy. Inflation was high, like today.
But very unlike today, the unemployment rate was...
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