2. The capacity of entrepreneurs to create virtual structures and use technologies to avoid the need for employees is growing almost exponentially. For the first time in history, you can take on major initiatives without hiring anyone.

Why hire lots of people when you don’t have too?

On the margin, the job offerings, I see more jobs claiming to require "college ed" — so this implies more job respondents than job openings. With already low wages and using unneeded qualifications as an easy way to reject too many applicants.

The real problem is that the college educated are not starting businesses. This is partly a failure of college, but mostly a failure of culture, where business is so often "the bad guy", and the vast majority of college students are herd-mentality "get-along" types who strongly do not want to be the bad guy.

It's almost non-PC to be an entrepreneur, and most college students are super-PC.

#2) too many unskilled HS grads being dumped into college is very right, but confirms the article's thesis of too many going to "college".

" wages of highly skilled workers should fall until supply and demand balance there." Actually, globalization is doing this hugely, which is why the post WW II US middle class status is eroding, with more moving up to upper middle & lower upper class, and even more moving to lower middle and even to upper lower class.

The job market is such that highly skilled & highly educated STEM workers are moving up, while highly educated (with inconsistently known how highly skilled) non STEM workers are seeing wage stagnation or slow degradation; perhaps faster reductions in starting salaries accepted, especially when internships are included.

Finally, the increase in regulations is acting on a brake for company creation and job creation — no other policy can solve this other than deregulation.

I have to disagree with you about the second point as you are looking at Large Corporations. In my skilled labor office, there are numerous ‘skilled’ positions that did not look for a college degree 20 years ago. (We have call center were expertise is not college related.) However, for new applicants I would recommend DAY ONE for the job is to work college degree today (especially before you start a family) because the company is always looking to eliminate any jobs and you don’t want to caught without the right skills.

An honest question: how is “skill” measured in such economic measures? Is it simply “more school = more skill” or is there some variation of degrees?

A broad mix of studies in a wide range of subjects over a specific period of (partial) years may produce an erudite individual, but not “qualified” under any particular program for a “Degree.”

There has come to be a difference in the perceptions of significance to “society” those facilities project, and their significance in the lives of those who would seek learning there.

Why are “jobs” regarded as “being created?”

Perhaps we need a Coasian, “The Nature of the Job.”

Simplified, jobs are human activities. The activities of some may be advantageous (or necessary) for others in their own activities (which in turn have links to activities of yet others).

That could imply that generation of, or removal of impediments to, activities, generally, might be a better focus of efforts than “Creating Jobs.” There has been some notice taken of late to “impediments.” There may also be a trend away from “designing” or centrally selecting the generation of activities. It’s a tough slog !

Same is happening to college grads. The demand curve (of jobs that can use educated people) may not be vertical, but there is no price at which all of them get employed doing something meaningful. And this may be a chronic feature, not a temporary imbalance, as LA illustrates.